


Intermezzo

by fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: Sound and Fury [8]
Category: Transformers, Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: BAMF Ravage, Betrayal, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Chaos, Crimes & Criminals, Espionage, Gen, Humor, Intrigue, M/M, Other, Police, Sabotage, Spies & Secret Agents, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insecticons poured out of the tank, a stream of chitinous wing covers and armored backs, of flashing legs and long-bladed mandibles. The flickering light from half-broken fixtures inside the tank and the Hive-force’s mottled colors made it difficult to tell one from the other. Instead they became a savage mass of razored mandibles and wings, of speed and viciously barbed talons. Screams mingled with desperate shouts of defiance as Enforcers fought and fell, the cacophony of battle overlaid by the buzzing of wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Soundwave has incorporated the telepathic module, and joined the growing ranks of the Decepticons. He has met with unprecedented success, but now faces even greater challenges as he tries to carve a safe space for his cohort in an increasingly violent, fragmented world. 
> 
> The Great War begins.

A flicker of movement caught the corner of his optic, just as something bumped his pede. Flipsides disconnected the leads to the virtual reality training module, disengaging sensory input from the simulation, and warily looked down. It hadn’t been his imagination: his work station seemed to have sprouted a skinny set of haunches and a lashing tail.

Flipsides blinked, twisting to look under the console. It was a nice piece of equipment, capable of multi-sensory inputs and intuitive scenarios, just as good as he’d ever had back in the Urayan training hospital. It might have even come from there for all he knew -- Lord Megatron didn’t authorize many raiding sorties now that the Senate had pulled back and Kaon was nearly self-sufficient, but when he did, the spoils were always good. There was plenty of energon now, for everyone in the army and most of the non-militarized mecha in the city as well. Plenty of parts, too, which raised the question of exactly why Buzzsaw was rummaging around underneath his console.

Flipsides started to ask just that question. “Buz--”

 _//Quiet! I nearly got -- fraggin’ Primus!//_ Buzzsaw’s tail lashed as he lunged at the unseen menace.

Curious, Flipsides climbed down from his chair as quietly as he could manage. He bent over to take a peek, and was nearly bowled onto his aft as Buzzsaw scrabbled backwards. “Bwa -- hey wha--?” the mechkin started.

 _//Shhh!//_ Buzzsaw’s head popped up, his crest flared with excitement, his beak stuffed to capacity. Two thin translucent wings poked out of either side of his beak. The clear silica wafers vibrated in impotent anger, rustling against Buzzsaw’s glossy black faceplates. _//Got it!//_

 _//Got what?//_ Flipsides asked, perplexed. Whatever Buzzsaw had caught, it wasn’t any wildlife that he was familiar with. Could be a drone, though if so, it was a very small one. Such tiny mechanisms were too limited even to make proper scouts, though they could be used as....

_//A spydrone! Laserbeak found the first one a joor ago. Soundwave’s got what he needs, said we can dispose of any others we find, any way we wanna. I’m gonna pull off the wings and --//_

_//Wait, what?//_ said Flipsides, blinking. He belatedly reviewed his commlogs, finding the medium-priority ping from Soundwave and another from Laserbeak. Both had been shunted to a tertiary queue while Flipsides’s processors were engaged with the difficult training module. _//Who is spying? Why spy on me, anyway? Is it the same mech who left that other listening device, back at the comm station?//_

 _//Maybe. Soundwave isn’t sure yet. And they’re probably watching you for the same reason they’re watching the rest of us--to see where we go and who we talk to.//_ Buzzsaw spread his wings, preparing to take off with his prize. _//The Boss has already hacked a few of the others to lay down false trails and find out who they belong to. I’m just gonna go drop this little scraplet into the nearest smelter--//_

 _//Wait.//_ Maybe he’d been hanging around Buzzsaw too long, but … Flipsides gave his cohort-brother a conspiratorial smile. _//I have a better idea. C’mon!//_

 

****** 

 

 _//You know it’s not gonna do any good to drop it off the roof, right?//_ Buzzsaw asked. _//It’s got wings and an antigrav node--it’ll just fly away.//_

Flipsides pinged the door. The heavy, pockmarked metal hatchway spiralled open with a low rumble, and he trotted through, onto the acid-scarred rooftop. The building was not particularly tall, even by Kaon standards, and was overshadowed by the chromed bulk of the surrounding Towers and their ancillary complexes, their glyph-engraved sides glowing in the darkness. Still, it was high enough for Flipsides’ purposes.

 _//I know. That’s not why we’re up here.//_ The mechkin headed over to the low structure on the far side of the roof. Underneath the protective shelter, several racks of courier-pods waited. Meant for small deliveries of items neither large enough nor important enough to require a dedicated courier-mech, the pods were simple mechanisms--oblong drones with basic flight capabilities and a small interior space for cargo. They could be programmed for any destination on the planet, but were neither particularly fast nor particularly secure; as a result, courier-pods were generally used only for low-value, non-urgent deliveries. Stretching upwards, Flipsides keyed in a code, then stepped back and watched as the delivery tray extended outwards, an empty pod rolling into place, ready to launch.

 _//What do you think? Should we give our little spy a one-way trip to the far side of Cybertron?//_ he asked Buzzsaw, feeling unexpectedly daring. He wasn’t usually one for pranks, but he was starting to see why Rumble and Frenzy enjoyed seeing how much they could get away with.

 _//Where do you--?//_ Buzzsaw started suspiciously, not entirely sure that this was better than just plucking the wings off and dumping it in a smelter. Then he caught the gleam in Flipsides’s optics as the mechkin tilted the pod so that Buzzsaw could see the destination display.

Buzzsaw chortled so hard, he nearly spat the tiny drone right out of his beak. _//Ha! That’s, that is just evil -- ok, help me stuff it in.//_

Between two hands, a beak, and a tail tip, the pair of symbionts managed to cram the tiny, buzzing drone into the pod’s cargo space. Flipsides locked the outer covering down with a sigh of relief; then, when the pod proved too awkward for Buzzsaw to carry easily, hauled it to the edge of the roof for takeoff.

“You sure the thing’ll trigger open in the right place?” Buzzsaw asked, jumping up to the rooftop ledge, where he paced with bouncy, hopping steps, tailtip flicking with excitement.

“I know it will,” Flipsides reassured him. “The xenoveterinarians at that zoo once ordered a tailored batch of drugs from the Academy. Waveguide used a delivery pod to send the nanites straight to the sea-bugs’ tank.” He held up the pod, to let it get its bearings. It took Flipsides a moment to realize he’d mentioned his first Master without stumbling over the name. Thinking of Waveguide still saddened him, but the memory no longer pained quite like it once had. When had that changed? He shook his helm. “The xenovets wanted to try treating the Deluvian sea-bugs with a new formulation. They were hoping to make them less... yanno. Scabrous.” Organics were just so... so squishy. Not to mention easily upset by even the tiniest changes in their environment. Flipsides felt sorry for them, poor things.

Buzzsaw hid his head under a wing to try to stifle the chortle. Deluvian sea-bugs might be interesting to study, but even the most generous mech couldn’t call them anything but grotesque. They were nonsymmetrical and lumpish, and messy too. “I hope I left the drone’s optics intact. I didn’t think to stop and check--” he started.

Flipsides let the carry-pod go, releasing the delivery to the chill breeze. “Shouldn’t matter; it still has chem sensors. See, the reason we could just put the nanite capsules in the cage... is that sea-bugs will eat anything. But they can’t digest metal.” Flipsides smiled serenely.

Buzzsaw gaped. “You mean....”

“Yep.” Flipsides shaded his optics as the pod-drone jetted away, its tiny burden still buzzing angrily. “That drone comptroller? Has a forthcoming journey through all twelve of a sea-bug’s pulpy gut-pouches.”

Buzzsaw nearly fell off the rooftop with his cackling. Flipsides had to lean out to pull him back up, and then they both slumped laughing and strutless against one another, right there in the middle of the landing strip, trying to catch their ventilations. Flipsides’s vocalizer warbled with his mirth. “A-and that drug? It was s-supposed to cure explosive organic flatulence.”

“Bwa-haha! D-did it work?”

“No!”

They’d just begun to wind down, when Buzzsaw recalled a snippet he’d learned. “S-sea-bugs -- ha, ha! -- coprophages!” which just set them both off again.

“Yup!”

Flipsides and Buzzsaw were both still giggling when Rumble and Frenzy tumbled out onto the rooftop a few breem later, carrying something between them as they jostled each other, fighting for control. _//Hey! What’re you doing up -- oh man, you already dropped one off the roof? W-we wanted to be first!//_

 _//Not the roof,//_ Buzzsaw bragged, neck arched in a proud s-curve. _//Something way, way better.//_ He exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Flipsides.

 _//Yeah.//_ Flipsides grinned. _//Besides, if you drop it off the roof, it’ll just fly away.//_

 _//Oh. Well, slag.//_ Rumble kicked his pede at the loose iron gravel. Frenzy shoved at him as well as he could with the drone clasped between their four little fists. _//S-should’a taken it to the slag p-pit in the first place.//_

 _//Or...//_ Flipsides cocked his head, thinking back to his half-finished training module. Drone piloting wasn’t easy; Soundwave had already modified the virtual reality programs to accommodate Flipsides’s limited processing ability. But even when a mech had the threads to direct hundreds or thousands of drones at once, instead of maybe three or four like Flipsides, some things were just plain hard to deal with. Excessive background noise, radiation, and vibration all made it tough to even remove a drone from the group network, let alone ignore it. _//Does this building have one of those... yanno, grinder things?//_

 _//Grinder things?//_ Buzzsaw echoed, confused. _//D’you mean a reclamation shredder?//_

 _//Yes, that!//_ Rumble and Frenzy still looked baffled, so Flipsides continued. _//Think about it. The drone controller has to devote at least one tertiary processing thread to the drone just to monitor for actionable data. If we trap it next to the shredder, or weld it to the outer casing so that the drone is constantly vibrating, the mech on the other end can’t ignore the feed. Plus the vibrations are always changing, so the controller can’t just set up a filter to ignore the null data ….//_

 _//So he either has ta listen to the constant noise, or he has to go try and free the drone!//_ Rumble finished, catching on. _//And if we stuff it somewhere really, really small or impossible to get to-//_

 _//-then m-maybe he can’t reach it at all? And if we make it so he can’t turn it off--s-serves ‘em right. They wanna listen in on us, then we’ll give ‘em s-something to listen to. C’mon!//_ Chortling, the pair of mechkin reversed course, hauling their burden back towards the roof hatch. _//Buzzsaw, where’s that shredder?//_

_//I’ll show you. C’mon, ‘Sides--this’ll be fun!//_

Swept up in the excitement, Flipsides raced down corridors and squeezed himself through ventilation ducts with the other symbionts -- his duties and his worries both, for once, wholly forgotten.

 

****** 

 

From the doorway of their meager shelter, Hoarfrost felt the familiar clench of his spark at the sight of their city. Frost-rimed openings stared blindly from emptied structures, the jumble of broken detritus littering the once-shining avenues between. Acid-scored and streaked with rust, the pockmarked walls crumbled a little more each cycle, eaten apart by the same wind that moaned through cracks in the metal, clattering through the foil-thin tangles of scrapweed that tumbled through the abandoned streets.

Arche hadn’t always been like this. Once it had been a thriving city; small, yes, but shining with life and light, filled with music and beauty. Originally a retreat for Praxian crystal sculptors, it had become a center for learning and for meditation over the vorn, buoyed by the fame of the artisans who lived and worked there. Arche’s buildings had soared, rebuilt again and again as architects expressed their ideas in metal, sculptors adorning every possible surface with reliefs and intaglio, artists working in a thousand different styles and disciplines, creating works both small and grand. Arche had housed all of it: literature, music, and poetry that spanned at least two Golden Ages, a vast sweep of artistic expression encompassing the entirety of Cybertronian experience, reaching for some small fraction of Primus’s glory.

Then the world had changed. Life became became harsher, and infinitely colder. Energon became scarce, and patrons even more so. Art and beauty fell to the wayside, discarded by the imperatives of survival. And Arche, deprived of its lifeblood, of the support of the greater city-states of Cybertron, slowly and inevitably withered. One mech, one cohort at a time, its population dwindled. Its buildings and streets emptied, its beauty left to the carbon ice.

Now only a few mecha were left. Hoarfrost could sense them only dimly -- distant signatures among the abandoned buildings, moving slowly. Scavengers, for the most part, or mecha too stubborn or too energon-starved to leave. Mecha with no resources, no options.

Like himself. Like his cohort.

With the rattle of cold-fractured wings, Flashback launched himself from his perch, landing with the barest flare of antigravs upon his master’s pauldron. Once, the lilleth-styled flightframe would have carved graceful flourishes in the air, or swept his wings and tail outward in a grand and beautiful sweep upon landing. Mere flight was for lesser airframes, he had once proclaimed; for a true flightframe, dancing and flying were one and the same, and both were to be done as well and as often as possible.

None of them, however, had the energon to spare for dancing now.

Flashback huddled close to his master’s helm, and Hoarfrost lifted a delicately-jointed hand, cupping that small frame, offering what extra warmth he could.

“Another day,” the flightframe said, resigned.

Two words--and yet they said everything. Another day of empty tanks. Another day of scavenging for scraps, for any dregs of energon or other fuels that might have been left behind. Another sunless, frigid day where the sky lightened only slightly, where poorly-maintained plating crumbled a little more at the edges. Where strut-deep fractures spread, splintering under the strain of moving through the relentless chill.

Well-fuelled, well maintained mecha had little to fear from the cold. Even the frigid vacuum of deep space was more of an inconvenience than a true threat--for mecha with fuel and resources to burn on self-repair and thermoregulation. But that was an advantage that his cohort no longer had.

“Yes,” Hoarfrost said. Acknowledging the words, and the despair, the dead city that spread out before them a mute witness to their plight. They should have left vorn ago, while they’d still had allies and energon to do so. But Arche had been their home for so long …. He’d hoped... he’d been so certain that the cycle would turn once more. That life and beauty and people would return to their home. That his cohort, who carried the priceless memories of songs and art and literature, of the finest works ever created in Cybertronian history, would be valued once again.

Even now, Hoarfrost had no reason to believe that conditions were better anywhere else. They had heard the Protector’s call, and the Prime’s, even as isolated as they were. But Lord Megatron would have no use for Chroniclers such as themselves, who could contribute nothing to his cause. The Prime--the Prime might have been more sympathetic, perhaps. But sympathy was no guarantee of energon, nor of safety. Especially not in the midst of a war.

So they had stayed, and hoped. Until hope too had left them behind.

Shuffler’s steady bulk moved up, the big hornframe’s helm hanging low, Skiptrace clinging to his back, huddled close to minimize heat loss. Skiptrace’s once-purple crest was mottled now, nothing of the topcoat left to guard the color nanites beneath, while one of Shuffler’s long horns, set above each optic, was blunted, the tip snapped off in an empty’s chassis. Hoarfrost’s First was as steady as always, a solid bulwark for his master, but even the big hornframe seemed loath to take that first step out into the dark. “Orders, Master?” he asked. It was a formality, more than anything. They all knew what their carrier would say.

Hoarfrost vented a sigh, feeling the subtle rattling of internals as he did so. “Search. Look for anything we can use, but stay close. And … survive.”

“Survival is a thing of chance and courage,” a voice said from the darkness. “I may be able to provide that chance. Do you yet have the courage to take it?” Scarlet optics glittered from the shadow of a broken wall. Hoarfrost bristled, defensive protocols stirring sluggishly to life, as Flashback and Skiptrace shrank back.

“Who’s there?”

A flightframe, sleek and elegant in scarlet and ebony, took a step sideways on his broken-walled perch, from shadows to half-light. “I am. For the moment, at least.” He tilted his helm, bending his long neck to regard them all critically.

Hoarfrost stilled, taken aback, his protocols tangling mid-execution. A symbiont, glossy and pristine, talons sharp as chipped obsidian -- a symbiont, newly arrived in these wastes. But why? What possible reason would bring a symbiont out here?

And not a hint of another carrier. Skiptrace flattened the crests that ran the length of his back, folding them even closer. “Best keep movin’, stranger,” the clawframe chirped. “No room here for another.” An obvious untruth, with just three symbionts in the cohort; even linesparked carriers had at least four docks. And yet there was truth in it, as well -- survival was uncertain enough without another tank to fill.

Flashback twisted his long neck around, shocked. Hoarfrost gestured for silence before his cohort could devolve into unseemly arguing. He shook his helm slowly. “Courage is scarce and far between of late, as are chances... beyond the one the empties offer to all slow or distracted mecha. If you have come for riddles or games, you have come to the wrong place.”

The dark flightframe seemed unimpressed, wingtips flicking. “Neither. I came only to deliver coordinates, and a warning. As I said: a chance, if you will take it.”

“Coordinates? For what?”

“Energon enough to see you through the orn, and a little cybertronium, as well. Underneath the remnants of a loadhauler, well-concealed, lies a carry-drone. Sealed within are supplies; enough to get you to Praxus, if you are careful in their use.” The flightframe regarded each of them in turn, sitting tall and confident. “I can give you these coordinates, and the lock-codes for the drone. This is, if you are brave enough to undertake the journey.”

Hoarfrost relaxed minutely. The flightframe did not seem to be any kind of threat--but that did not lessen his suspicion. Few mecha had any energon to spare for friends, much less strangers. Why would someone offer this to them? And what would be the price of accepting this benevolence? “How far is this cache?” he asked warily.

The flightframe replied with a simple data-chirp, and Hoarfrost considered it, turning the geolocator code over in his processors. The cache--if it truly existed--was not close. It would take almost all of his remaining energon reserves just to reach it. If the strange symbiont was lying, and it wasn’t there … “I would speak with your carrier, Memory-keeper.”

“He is... otherwise engaged.” The dark flightframe tilted his helm. The small symbiont was running warm, with power to spare for non-essential systems. “As should I be. You are neither the last Chronicler in peril, nor the gravest case. You have what you need--”

Hoarfrost shook his helm, anger warring with disbelief. “You ask not for bravery, but for faith, Memory-keeper.” Faith enough to step into the darkness on a stranger’s word, to trust the cold winds, to trust that the next step would be provided. His cohort might persist for vorns more here, in this cold, amid the ruins of the arts which his symbionts treasured so well. It wasn’t much, but it was life. For a time. It was a great deal to risk on the word of one strange symbiont. Indeed, it was all they had.

Laserbeak studied the mech. “Perhaps I do,” he said, thoughtfully. “The paths before all of us will be difficult, and fraught with uncertainty. But the only way out of this, is through. Concealment here is of no further service to you -- or to the sparks you host. Think on that, Templar, before you abandon what faith remains to you.” The symbiont spread his wings, flightplates splayed in a glossy display, a dark and jagged cloak.

Hoarfrost grasped at one last thread. “Wait,” he said, the glyph hoarse and crackling. “What warning?”

The flightframe twisted his long neck, regarding the ragged little cohort of Chroniclers with first one optic, then the other. “Arche stands between two great powers, at the center of a growing divide.”

Shuffler shook his heavy helm, broken horns sweeping the cold air. _//We are no part of that conflict. The art here, the history -- they will have value, no matter which power prevails.//_

The dark flightframe ground a gear, a brief, sharp sound. _//They would--if either power cared enough to preserve them.//_ His scarlet gaze was sharp and pitiless, unwavering. _//My carrier has seen what is coming. Arche has already been forgotten by all but a few. Soon even those will be gone. What remains will be ground into nothing in the conflict to come; first art, then mecha, then the very walls themselves, until not even the memory of what once had been remains.//_ He paused, a deliberate, weighted beat. _//Unless … you are willing to stand as guardians, and brave the darkness in order to keep it safe.//_

“I--” Hoarfrost looked down at Shuffler, at Skiptrace. At his own worn, frost-speckled pedes.

“The decision is yours. I have fulfilled my master’s charge, and my other duties await.” The flightframe stepped sideways, unfurling his wings. Glossy, gleaming black and scarlet flightplates shone in the dim light. “Do not tarry too long, Templar. Or you may find you have no choices left.”

“How do you know all this? Who *are* you, anyway?” Skiptrace accused, indignation overcoming his wary silence.

“My master is a historian; one of the finest. History moves in cycles, and he has seen the shape of things to come,” the dark flightframe said, his field rippling with … amusement?

“As for myself--” He launched himself into the chill air, antigravs lifting him effortlessly. _//--my designation is Laserbeak.//_

With that, the flightframe turned on a wingtip, gracefully wheeling up into the air, leaving a stunned cohort in his wake.

 _Laserbeak?_ The legendary Laserbeak? It couldn’t be … there’s no way a carrier would risk such an ancient symbiont out in the frigid wastelands alone! And yet … Hoarfrost tracked the dark flightframe as long as his clouded optics and the chill mist allowed -- not long, for the strange symbiont was agile, and very swift. He reached out to lay a hand on Shuffler’s broad, steady back.

“Master?” The hornframe said, the heavy plates of him grinding a little, one against the other.

Skiptrace clung more fiercely still, his ragged crests flared, his small claws scritching. “We aren’t really thinking of following these directions, are we?”

Was this hope? This pale thing, thin as a layer of nacre, settling over all they had suffered? Hoarfrost wasn’t sure they wanted it, for it came at a terrible price. To abandon Arche, all the world-turnings spent here, all the priceless relics of the past... it was unthinkable. Folded carefully in deep crypts here were relics beyond all price, sacred treasures, their ancient glyphs still undeciphered. Thousands upon thousands of Metioche scrolls waited in their sealed casques, their stories of times before even the Primes written in the very knots of the metalmesh -- and so delicate that a sudden movement or a breath of this acrid air would dissolve them.

Was this to be Hoarfrost’s legacy? The history of a world abandoned?

Flashback pressed his delicate helm to his carrier’s audial. Hoarfrost could hear the flightframe’s delicate gears clicking within him, fragile as spun glass in the cold. How much longer before the self-repair nanites, in their desperate scavenging, stripped away too much, and left his beauty forever grounded?

How long before all their sparks guttered, spinning out their last radiance into this cold?

Hoarfrost stepped out onto the debris-clogged roadway, his gyros compensating slowly as the weight of his chestplates split open, exposing faintly rust-mottled internals. “Flashback, Skiptrace, dock.”

They both obeyed him without question or hesitation, settling into the sanctuary of their master’s docks. Shuffler approached slowly as his Master sealed his cohort safely inside, watching as Hoarfrost folded down into his alt. Hoarfrost had not transformed in many orns; the complex shifting required too much energy, was too great a waste. But for this, they would need the speed that wheels would provide. The process was slow, panels grating as they lifted and turned, tucking the big mech down into a streamlined, truck-like altmode.

 _//Master,//_ Shuffler commed privately, on a narrow-banded channel, so that the others could not hear his reservations. _//Are you sure about this?//_

 _//No.//_ The very thought of leaving was a hollow ache in the heart of him. But Laserbeak had been right. Hoarfrost had already waited too long; he dared not hesitate any longer. _//But we are the keepers of memory. We must survive, even if Arche does not. The relics of the past may be lost, but their memory must survive.//_

Shuffler bowed his horned helm, recognizing that truth. _//As you say, Master.//_ Hoarfrost unlatched a battered, worn cargo panel for his First, and the hornframe climbed up, settling himself down in the open-air bed. In this position, the hornframe had a clear view of the road around him, and a clear shot, should circumstances require. His sole remaining rack of missiles was the heaviest weapon the cohort had. _//Trusting a stranger … it is not the most foolish thing we’ve ever done.//_

 _//No,//_ Hoarfrost agreed, wry amusement warring with cynicism borne of exhaustion  as he sealed his hatch and headed out, his tires crunching against the frosty rubble underneath. _//And perhaps, if we are fortunate, it will not be the last.//_

 

 

******* 

 

Nyon was a machine unlike any other. Pressed on one side by the jagged upthrusts of the Hex range, on the other by the winding course of the Rust Sea’s greatest tributary, the city had grown up vertically. It had not been carved from natural towers, like Iacon or Uraya, but rather built by the activity of mecha, rising up to scrape the very skies with the audacity of its construction. Twisting spires rose up in arches and whorls, held impossibly aloft by the skill of their builders. Purely utilitarian domes crowded like enormous silos, their curves their only nod to elegance. The bare struts of even taller constructions sang in the constant wind at those elevations, hollow echoes of richer times and plans left incomplete.

That high metal hum, however, was the least of the city’s languages. For each of these towers, from the least squalid rust-slum to the rarified heights, was networked through and through. It was a piecemeal AI, a coagulation of a hundred thousand cross-talking nets, some of them dating back almost as far as the first Golden Age, an information system that had no parallel. On the strength of that foundation, Nyon had remade itself countless times: from an archivists hub to media conglomerate to an industrial center and everything in between. And enfolded in that complexity, washed in all the data of the acroplex, some of those nodes *lived*, thought and dreamed as they sheltered their inhabitants.

For Nyon had not only been built by mecha; it was built of them. More than any other city, Nyon was the home of cityformers. Interlinked and eternal companions, no fewer than fourteen cityformers had been incorporated into Nyon’s vast, sprawling structure: from the ancient Civicus buried deep in the city’s heart, to Ballisticus and Formidex standing eternal vigil upon the city-state’s outermost reaches, their weapons and walls designed to defend the mecha who dwelt within.

In the shadows of these giants, Ravage was invisible, unnoticeable: a ghost in the machine. Sensory whiskers pricked forward, the bladeframe eeled his way through a crack, the rust of ages flaking down onto his bladed hide. A few more turns, and the way abruptly ended in a void, where wind licked at bare struts and girders. A building had been demolished here, long ago, perhaps with plans to erect something grander in its place. The gap between structures, however, afforded the symbiont an unparalleled view of supply depot and the ranks of Senate enforcers beyond it.

Energon came through here, along with other high-value shipments of weapons and troops. As a result, this particular depot was well-shielded from normal surveillance. Turrets and optical disruptors surmounted the high walls. The upper quarters were rimmed in long, edged spikes, set into simple pressure mechanisms -- even a light touch, as if by a climbing mech, would ignite a mindless grinding action strong enough to tear most mecha limb from limb. Roving nets of laser beams hinted at a dozen other security measures, very much like the other, similar Senate installations that Ravage had scouted.

He had not been the first mech sent to infiltrate the Senate controlled city-state and report back, of course. The Decepticons had numerous informants in the city, some of whom now reported to Soundwave. Their reports, however, had all painted a very different picture than the one Ravage had seen: that these depots were undermanned, their defenses often poorly maintained. Their recommendations had been that the local Senate rebels and Decepticon sympathizers should raid these installations, and strip them of energon and armaments by force.

And when Soundwave recommended an attack, based on the strength of that intelligence, when those growing pockets of rebellion within the city were inevitably crushed ... Ravage did not imagine it would be the warframes who took the blame.

But refusing to act would also make Soundwave seem weak, indecisive. Luckily Ravage’s master had known better than to blindly trust the information he had been given. Long experience as an Archivist had taught him to question numbers that lined up too perfectly, to suspect reports devoid of dissenting voices. Thus, Ravage had been sent to Nyon. Both to see the truth for himself and, if he could, to find a way out of this trap.

Still watching the precise movements of white-armored enforcers below, Ravage stilled his lashing tail, optics narrowed in thought.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” said a voice. Ravage was wheeling even as the first chirping glyphs were vocalised, long fangs bared. Nested above him in a tangle of rafters, a jumpframe peered back at him, long thin fingers gripping the girder nervously, all six optics seeming huge in the darkness. The academic little frametype was as small as Ratbat, but there the similarities ended. “Master says Noisewave’ll be mad if we get caught.”

Ravage flicked back his sensory spines, plating rippling as he shifted back to a more relaxed stance. The jumpframe was obviously no threat. “Is that so?” he said, amused. “And yet, here we both are. Noisewave is your carrier?” Ravage had never heard that name before. He tilted his helm, taking in the jumpframe’s appearance. The little symbiont’s dark green plating was a bit worn about the edges, but otherwise well cared for, and those amber optics were alert as the jumpframe watched him with characteristic wariness.

“No, the tall carrier from Kaon. You’d better tell your carrier to link up; I guess he wants to know where everyone is, in case we need help.” The little jumpframe forwarded a set of emergency contact information intimately familiar to Ravage -- largely because Frenzy had helped Soundwave set up the secure relays and datapaths. The jumpframe twitched nervously at Ravage’s expression. “I wasn’t going to get close,” he said defensively. “But I’d heard things, and I just wanted to see.”

‘Noisewave’ indeed! “And what, exactly, have you been hearing?”

“Oh, all kinds of things,” said the symbiont proudly. “Like, this one time, they caught this rebel and almost everyone left to take him to --” the jumpframe paused, thinking. “Yanno … I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“It never hurts to be cautious, this is true,” Ravage agreed mildly. “Would it help if I told you I come from Kaon?” He turned and made a show of watching the activities below, seemingly unconcerned by the jumpframe’s scrutiny, even as he watched the little symbiont from the periphery of his secondary optics.

“Really?” the jumpframe whispered, as if he feared being overheard. For all his curiosity, it seemed that this kind of spying was new to the little mech, judging from the way his field flared with _excitement/fear/suspicion_ at Ravage’s response. “But--why would you come here? Where is your carrier? Did he tell you to follow me? Am I in trouble?”

Very new to these kinds of games indeed, if the worst possibility the little jumpframe could think of was that he might have been found out by his carrier. Ravage swivelled one audial in the little mech’s direction. “I was told to be here--but not because of you.” He paused, letting that sink in. “We had heard that Nyon was safely in the Senate’s subspace, and that mecha here couldn’t imagine leaving Iacon’s side.” A lie, of course, but the jumpframe’s reaction to it would tell him more than any truth ever would.

“Who told you that?” The jumpframe gasped, predictably indignant at the spread of misinformation. “Whoever they were, they were lying! There’s all sorts of trouble here. Lots of bad things, and mecha who aren’t happy about ‘em … Nyon is about as stable as methane in a slagpit right now.”

“An unusual deduction,” Ravage said mildly.

The jumpframe bristled. “Everyone knows the Senate’s always been strong in Nyon. But ever since Kaon broke from the Assembly, Iacon’s been sending extra enforcers and other troops. I think they’re afraid what might happen if Lord Megatron convinces Nyon to side with him,” the jumpframe continued, as if imparting a great secret.

“It sounds like the Senate has little reason to fear.” It honestly wasn’t far from the truth, from what Ravage had seen. Which was unfortunate -- Nyon’s formidable defenses were a prize indeed, and one of the reasons the Decepticon Command had set their sights on the city-state in the first place. If enough of the Towers and the foundation-sparked mecha of Nyon could be swayed to ally themselves with the Decepticons, then the city-state’s walls and its economic base could be added to Megatron’s sphere of influence. Cityformers did not typically concern themselves with politics; it did not matter to them who ruled. Their concerns were far broader, focused more upon the protection and day to day lives of the mecha who lived within and around them.

The Senate knew that, of course. And while they might not need to fear the disloyalty of Nyon’s cityformers, its mecha were another matter entirely. Thus the depots, the extra troops and weapons. Nyon’s rebellious elements simply couldn’t compare -- not even if Ravage believed the informants.

“You’d think so--but you’d be wrong,” the jumpframe said, puffing himself up, proud of his cleverness. “The Senate might send extra enforcers, but they’re not sending extra shipments of supplies. Not enough anyway--they’ve been short on energon, wax, all the little things they need for a long time. So a lot of the time, they just take what they want. I’ve seen ‘em smash up merchants that’re slow to hand over whatever’s caught their optics. And not only supplies -- that barracks, there? It was an apartment block when we arrived, half a vorn ago.” The little symbiont took in Ravage’s sidelong glance. “I know the public city maps don’t say so. They all got changed afterwards. No one likes it, but--no one can stop them, either.”

“Hn.” Now this... this was interesting. None of the groups on whom Soundwave had data had known the layout of any of these depots. Firsthand intel would be invaluable. “What proof do you have?”

“Proof!” The jumpframe yelped, fingers twitching on the strut like he dearly wanted to leap at Ravage. Another Memory-keeper, doubting his knowledge? Then he ducked down, looking about, as if his outburst might have summoned his carrier from thin air. “I’ll prove it to you. Even better than a memory--I’ll show you the people they displaced!”

And just like that, the jumpframe was gone, bounding rapidly between close-knit spars and debris.

Ravage chuff-growled, amusement and annoyance both in the sound. Jumpframes were reliable, in their way, if not generally very brave. It was possible that this might be the break he had been looking for. Or it could be nothing but a waste of his time and patience.

Still, it wasn’t as if he had a better prospect at the moment. Curious and wary, he followed the flicker of the jumpframe’s extravagantly-spined tail, prowling down into the labyrinthine depths of Nyon.


	2. Chapter 2

The tight twists of Nyon’s underbelly, Ravage found, had changed a great deal in the past millennia.

In truth, they were always changing, as mercurial as the city above. Solvents carved runnels, hollowed echoing chambers, trickles hissing together in fuming rivers that raged and thundered and then vanished, siphoned away into the molecular flux of the Rust Sea. Caverns, iron ruins, and the hollowed legacies of the cataracts -- all of them formed a vast drainage network, so complex as to rival the streets above.

The cityformers had their presence here, too. The rusting, eaten-through iron of the land was held together, here and there, by immense pylons, glossy expanses of metal, lambent with the tangerine flakes of biolights and indicators, solvents swirling around their behemoth bases. Whether these were portions of the cityformers themselves, or just the huge extrusions they used for support in a crumbling world, even Ravage could not say. But he placed his pedes with care in any case, following the flick of the jumpframe’s bushy tail.

“Here, here,” chirped the smaller symbiont, bounding through a crack almost too small for Ravage. But then the space before them opened up -- a chiseled corridor, cramped for most mecha. Part of an emergency shelter, perhaps. They weren’t particularly deep; Ravage could feel the vibrations generated by all the activity on the surface. And, audials pricked forward, he could hear more than that -- murmurs, quiet voices, tight-banded but civilian comms.

All except one.

“This is one of the places where the displaced mecha--” The jumpframe nearly collided with an ebony pede, and scrambled back. “Whaa--”

_//Shh. Let us survey the area first, before announcing our presence.//_

_//Survey! I already know everything that -- wait, where are you going?//_ The little jumpframe scurried a quick circle and went scampering after the bladeframe’s flicking tail.

A few powerful leaps placed Ravage on a ledge, near the rough-hewn roof. He prowled along the narrow, rusted path, steadfastly ignoring the jumpframe’s antics, which threatened to tangle his pedes. The lithe, bouncy little symbiont -- Tripwire -- seemed determined to live up to his designation. Another corner, and…

...he’d been right, in a way. This was a forgotten shelter -- or perhaps rather, a refugee camp for the forgotten. From his vantage, Ravage could see down a long, wide room, just a little too broad to be called a corridor, branching with dozens of smaller cavities, until it dead-ended in a tumble of rust. Hundreds of mecha were encamped down the long space and the cramped side-corridors. The pale lights of heaters glowed fitfully, flickering like thermal-spectrum stars in the darkness. Most of the mecha huddled here waited, conserving their stores of energon. Others, a few figures, moved aimlessly in the dim light, unable to keep still. A dim susurrus of conversation rose from the huddled forms, and their sparse belongings choked the passage: metalmesh and bales of wire, artisans’ tools, half-finished artwork, pieces of equipment, the mementos of a hundred livelihoods disrupted and set adrift.

Raised voices, quickly cut off in favor of comms, attracted Ravage’s attention. Finding narrow footholds along the broken walls, Ravage prowled closer.

 _//That’s Hatchback,//_ whispered Tripwire, nervously skittering along behind the larger bladeframe, his small digits clinging to outcrops, finding purchase in cracks. _//But I don’t know who...//_

 _//I do.//_ Ravage didn’t snarl, as much as he wanted to, but the hackled blades along his spine were evidence enough of his ire. _//His name is Fastlane.//_ He was a Decepticon informant--one who reported to Soundwave. And yet Soundwave had known nothing of this encampment, or the mecha here, or the knowledge they held.

Not until now.

 _//Oh, is he a friend of yours?//_ Tripwire chirped, then shrank back as Ravage slanted him a narrow-opticked look. _//...guess not.//_

Ravage fanned out his sensory spines, upping the gain on his audials. All he could pick up from the distant huddle of mecha, though, was the hum of encrypted comm traffic. He would need to get closer, pick up more of the channel if he wanted to stand a chance of breaking into the encoded transmissions. _//Is there a way to get closer?//_ he asked Tripwire. Then, as an afterthought, added, _//Without being seen?//_

 _//Um--maybe?//_ The jumpframe appeared to have finally realized that a bigger game was afoot. Torn between trepidation and curiousity, he jittered nervously; then appeared to come to a decision. _//I know a way. We can go up!//_

The roof of the refuge had appeared solid enough from a distance. But as the two symbionts climbed upwards, Ravage could tell that its solidity was an illusion. Instead the topmost parts of the eroding cavity were honeycombed with openings, acid and rust working together over countless vorn to create a latticework of protrusions and flaking arches high above the tunnel floor. It was a path that only a symbiont would be able to navigate; those rotted metal spars would never hold the weight of a normal-sized mech, not even a minibot. Even a symbiont would have to be exceedingly careful. One misplaced pede, one miscalculated step, and the fragile metal could give way, sending them both tumbling down into the midst of the mecha below.

Luckily, Ravage had long experience in navigating such chancy footing. And for all his nervous energy, Tripwire was equally adept, leaping from one metal perch to the next, thin digits and pede-claws digging nimbly into the uneven surfaces. Slowly, carefully, they wound their way towards where Fastlane stood with another mech, his worn, acid-spotted red and yellow plating standing out in the dim light. Finding a good perch within range, Ravage crouched, bending all his attention to catching and decoding the comm signals of the mecha below. Without the codebreaking algorithms that Soundwave had given him, his efforts would have been futile. But Soundwave’s ascension to his new rank had afforded his cohort a great many advantages; one of which was access to military-grade codebreakers and channel decryption codes.

Hatchback was a mech of middling size, mostly bluish-gray, with a broad stripe of what might once have been a marbled tan down his centerline. With access to washracks and detailing equipment, he might have passed for a dataworker of sorts, or perhaps one of the light manual labor classes, well-suited to small loads and small projects. Ravage’s overriding impression of the bot, however, was exhaustion -- the weariness of a mech who had carried the burdens of a township for far too long. The mech shook his helm slowly as Fastlane spoke.

The civilian bandwidths were easiest to crack, as they were warded mainly against innocent eavesdroppers. _//Listen, I know that getting supplies in is hard, but…. If… if we could just get some of the crystallography toolsets, we could get at least get some of the landscaping mecha employed again, and then… I know. Of course we want Lord Megatron’s aid, it’s just….no, no. I didn’t mean that, not at all. How? I mean, we don’t have anything to...//_ the mech’s stubby doorwings and loading access hatch drooped a little more with every exchange as he was -- quite skillfully, if Ravage was any judge -- browbeaten into agreement.

The discordant frequencies of the military-grade encryption resolved, wavelengths blending together, signal emerging gradually from the noise. Nearly there…. Ravage reached out and pinned the jumpframe down before the little mech could scamper into his line of transmission. _//Quiet!//_ he hissed, before Tripwire could issue more than a surprised squeak.

Fastlane moved a little closer to his target, subtly encroaching on the gray mech’s field, radiating _confidence/urgency_. _//...know you have no other choice. The supplies…. still in enforcer storage… midst of the very…. They don’t care about…. just sitting there, waiting for you to reclaim...//_

Hatchback shook his helm. _//If -- *if* I can convince everyone that we need to do this, and if they’ll even try it--//_

 _//They’ll need convincing,//_ Fastlane interjected, his comms still crackling a little in Ravage’s audials. _//But these mecha would follow you to the Pit and back; one little repossession is nothing. Then you’ll have your tools, your homes, your workshops-- and all the credits and energon these fraggers have been stealing from the merchants. You’ll have everything you’ll need to reclaim your lives.//_

 _//But...//_ Hatchback turned his helm as somewhere in the complex, a mechling chittered in distress -- his tanks too close to empty, perhaps, for far too long. _//We’re not… none of us are fighters. Not even the warframes. They dumped those stacks long ago. This plan … what you’re asking us to do...//_

 _//Not I,//_ purred Fastlane. _//But rather, Lord Megatron himself. He will supply all the expertise you require… once your attack has begun. But you have to meet him halfway. You heard his call to arms -- would you refuse it? For yourself, or for all the others here who rely on your leadership?//_

Hatchback said, casting a slow look around the crowded squalor of the camp. He straightened slowly, resolute. _//I… no. No. We’ll be there, we’ll begin the attack, just like you said.//_

_//Good. Seventy-three joors; you can’t be late. The forces waiting to step in -- if they see you hesitate, see you retreat… your diversion will be in vain. The Lord Protector’s troops will fall back, and then...//_

_//I know,//_ Hatchback said simply, helm lowered. _//I know.//_

 _//Good.//_ Fastlane reached out and clamped a hand bracingly on one dingy pauldron, as if to shore up Hatchback’s resolve. _//You’re making the right choice, my friend. Words won’t put energon in our tanks--but this will. Trust me. Everything we’ll be better, once we reclaim what is ours.//_

Ravage resisted the urge to lash his tail, watching as the informant gave Hatchback a few more bracing words, promising Decepticon support, before turning to leave. Fastlane ostensibly reported to Soundwave, but it was now obvious that he was playing a game of his own. A game that appeared to be designed to wipe out this ragged little band of Decepticon sympathizers, and squash any insurrection before it had ever truly begun.

Ravage stayed where he was, watching and thinking--until the jumpframe under his pede wriggled, making a muffled noise of protest.

 _//Keep quiet,//_ he warned, even as he lifted his talons. Tripwire wriggled backwards, plating clamped down tight in indignation.

 _//I *have* done this before, you know,//_ he said huffily, sensory pines flaring upward before resettling. _//What was that? What did you hear?//_

_//Plans and lies. Hatchback intends to lead his mecha to the Enforcers’ stronghold, to take back what is theirs.//_

_//What? But--how? Hatchback can’t … they don’t … they’re not warframes. They’re really going to go up against *Enforcers*?//_ Tripwire, at least, was suitably aghast at the idea. Which only drove home how desperate Hatchback and the other mecha huddled below must be.

Fastlane was obviously using that desperation for his own ends. That, however, did not necessarily preclude Ravage from using it for his. His first order of business, however, would need to remove Fastlane from the equation. Whoever the informant’s true masters were--the Senate, Soundwave’s superiors, or merely Fastlane’s own opportunistic greed--it didn’t matter. Ravage could feel his master’s agreement coiling with his own, cold and merciless.

Fastlane had become a liability.

… and he was leaving. Ravage rose to his pedes, prowling with swift intent after his quarry, who was making his unhurried way towards the upper passages. Tripwire followed, keeping his vocalizer mercifully silent, though the same could not be said for his comms.

 _//Are we gonna follow him? What are we going to do? I don’t like this_ _\--maybe I should warn Hatchback. Or warn my carrier? Are you gonna tell YOUR carrier? Where is your carrier, anyway? Is he here? Where are we going? Oo, are we going to see who else Fastlane talks to?//_

 _//*We* are going nowhere.//_ Ravage fixed the scampering little symbiont with a baleful optic. His glare, however, seemed to affect the symbiont not at all. Ravage huffed a sigh as Tripwire squealed, about to protest. _//However, if you wish to help me save these mecha, there is one thing you can do.//_

Tripwire perked up. _//Ooh, what is it, what is it?//_

Ravage surveyed the small, dark green jumpframe, from twitching whiskers and cluster of bright, beady optics, to the tip of his lashing, sensory-spined tail. What he wouldn’t give for Laserbeak, or Buzzsaw or -- even Ratbat could be trusted to complete a simple task without getting distracted. Mostly. But then, beggars really couldn’t be choosers, could they? _//Contact your carrier. Tell him to use the emergency channel you’ve been given; I have need of your cohort.//_

 

 

 

**********

 

“No way you ever seen a Guardian, Redshift.” The warframe snorted, crossing his arms, the big artillery mods on his backplates shifting higher, as if punctuating his disbelief.

“Did too!” the frontliner shot back. “It came right up over the cliffs outside’a Polyhex, trailing smoke and fire like it were burning up from the inside out. It was huge--bigger’n a tankframe, bigger’n a shuttlemech, even!--with these long spine-things stuck out to the side. Flew like it were on rockets, it did.”

“Sounds like a fragging weatherdrone ta me.” The other frontliners clustered around the table laughed in agreement. It was one thing to talk scrap in the muster-hall, quite another to talk *unbelieveable* scrap.

“Hey!” Redshift protested loudly, waving his arms. Other mecha turned from their conversations to look. The hall was crowded, busy with mecha either leaving their shift or about to head out on one. It had once been a huge ballroom, perhaps; traces of gilt and engraving still clung to the walls and ceiling. Most of the lavish decoration had been pried off and sold, or even used as clinker to fuel the energon refineries, The rarest minerals and metals had gone into fortifying the energon itself, providing just the elements that warframes required to rebuild parts stripped by a megavorn of neglect. Or perhaps it simply amused Lord Megatron to give his troops a ‘taste’ of the Towers.

“Yeah, ain’t no way a Guardian is bigger than a shuttlemech,” came a new voice. “They ain’t no bigger than a Seeker, most times.” Optics and frames shifted to look over--and down--at the new speaker. Rumble--who didn’t quite top a frontliner’s knee-joint--looked up at them, seemingly oblivious to the difference in size. “‘Course, that don’t make them any less fraggin’ scary,” he added.

A big grounder laughed. “See, Redshift. Even the local glitchmice know better than ta believe a story like that!”

Redshift scowled. “What the frag--? Yeah, right. Like a scraplet like you has ever seen a Guardian.”

Rumble lifted his chin, propping small fists on pelvic spars pugnaciously. “Sure I have! I’ve seen one up close and personal. Better n’ you ever will, anyway.”

“Why you little--” Redshift lashed out, engines growling, as he grabbed for the little mech. But Rumble was already dancing away, dodging with practiced ease.

“Whatsamatter? Truth hurt?” he taunted. “Just because you don’t wanna listen to someone who knows what he’s talkin’ about, doesn’t mea--erk!” His vocalizer broke into a surprised squawk as he was grabbed from behind. A blue and gold frontliner lifted the struggling, kicking mechkin up, eyeing him.

“I didn’t know we were letting scraplets inta the ranks.” Talons closed tighter, and plating crumpled underneath that viselike grip. Rumble yelped. “You got quite a mouth on you, glitch.” That visored helm glanced over at Redshift. “Whaddaya think? Just drop him in the nearest ‘cycler? Or do you want me to crush him into a gambado ball for ya?”

“You do that, and you ain’t never gonna live long enough ta--skRRK!” Something popped, and Rumble cried out in pain as fluids began to leak from fractured plating and torn internals.

“Let him GO, you fragger!” Frenzy’s battle-cry was accompanied by precise stab of a laser cutter into the frontliner’s knee-joints. Caught by surprise, the frontliner’s legs crumbled underneath him. He pitched forward, falling--and taking Rumble with him, still helplessly pinned in a taloned grip.

But not for long. With another battle-screech that deafened audials and sent the closest mecha stepping backwards, Frenzy launched himself onto the bigger mech’s backplates, and stabbed again. This time, aiming for a primary relay line. His tiny weapon normally wouldn’t have penetrated a frontliner’s heavy armor, but the arena had taught Frenzy well. He knew a frontliner’s weaknesses, the joins and tiny gaps that could be exploited, and the cutter stabbed unerringly home. The bigger mech stiffened, jerking as the signals were disrupted, self-repair momentarily unable to reroute past the damage--and his talons spasmed open, dropping his victim.

“You little fragg--arrrgh!” The frontliner crashed face-first into the long metal table, sending cubes flying, unseating recruits and grizzled veterans alike. Most of the fuel cubes, once airborne, automatically restarted their containment fields to keep the liquid safely inside -- but others leaked, and energon spilled in slick pink puddles over the floor. Other tables of warriors scrambled to their pedes as mecha shouted and shoved at one another.

The instigators of the disturbance scuttled under the table, too small and too quick to be noticed by any but the closest mecha. “F-frag Rumble, are y-you--”

“Get offa me! That rusted piston, I’m gonna pulverowderize ‘im!” The little red mech fumed furiously, shaking off his brother’s hands, gears grinding as he forced his arms through their transformation sequence -- just in time to intercept a reaching hand as big as his whole torso. With a muffled *whoomph*, the little mech’s piledriver flattened a fingertip into the ground so hard it left a dent in the floorplates. The attached mech howled, bowling over the scanty cover of the table with a furious shoulder-crash, missing Rumble, who dashed between his legs.

“T-that smelts it!” Frenzy cried, throwing himself into the fray, hammering at kneecaps and bashing pedes as he darted after his sibling. “Hey Bullhorn! Slamhammer’s b-been telling everyone he stole yer filler kit n’ used it ta wax his aft!”

The effect of Frenzy’s announcement was immediate: a sky-blue frontliner looked up, optics wide, already stammering a denial… just in time to catch a big green tankframe’s fist with his faceplates. In an instant, what had been nothing more than a simple fistfight, just a couple of mecha banging each other up, turned into a raging free-for-all. Someone overturned another table -- Frenzy ran out from under its descending shadow, booting a falling mech underneath for good measure. “Rumble! R-rumble!” He jumped a prone mech’s legs, dodged around the mass of a chair crumpled into an untidy knot, and spotted his twin.

“You!” The same blue and gold frontliner who had tried to crush Rumble, now leaking lubricant from someplace deep in his chassis and both primary optics cracked, had heaved himself up onto his knees. Which put him at a much better height for spotting mechkin. The frontliner’s mouthparts, half the battlemask ripped away, twisted into a jagged snarl. “This is all your fault!”

“W-we gotta get outta here!” Frenzy yelled into the howling din, scrabbling forward, even as Rumble made a purposeful beeline toward the frontliner, punching a leg along the way with force enough to crack the shinplate.

“I’’m’a pound ya inta scra-- what the!?” Rumble jerked around as Frenzy grabbed at his crinkled pauldron, pulling his punch before he hit his twin.

“W-we gotta go! The officers--”

“WHAT THE FRAG IS GOING ON IN HERE?” A stentorian voice roared through the room.

“It was them!” The blue and gold frontliner staggered to his pedes, slipping in the spilled energon. “Two fragging minis, smaller than minis, like microbots or something, couple’a talking scraplets--” the frontliner pointed a shaking talon at the instigators. “They started--”

Mecha frozen by that roar of rage turned to look as military enforcers shoved their way through the crowd, kicking recruits out of their path.

“Uhm. Linebreach,” said a mech with a broken audial horn, rebooting his optics. “There aren’t any--”

The nearest military enforcer turned, giving Linebreach an unamused glare. “Talking scraplets?”

Linebreach scrabbled backwards, not even trying to find his footing anymore, looking frantically around for support. Unfortunately for him, Redshift had been offlined in the brawl, and the other frontliners didn’t appear to be inclined to come forward. “There were! Really! The little glitch couldn’t’ve gone far--”

“You don’t say.” The mech turned, surveying the sullen crowd of dented mecha. “I’ve heard enough. Lock ‘em up!”

 

 

 

**********

 

“OwowowOW! That’s my arm, ‘Sides, not a fraggin’ lever!”

“I’m sorry! But this plate is stuck, and I have to pop it out. Do you want me to take your arm off instead?” Flipsides paused, small energon-smeared hands resting on the other mechkin’s cracked pauldron, blue optics worried.

Rumble gave that some serious thought. “Think it’d hurt less?” he asked hopefully.

“Well … I can interrupt sensory feedback while the arm’s off, but I’m not a medic. It’s probably gonna hurt a little when I disconnect and reconnect it,” Flipsides admitted reluctantly. He gently lifted up on the damaged arm again, trying to dislodge the part of the plate that had jammed itself into the crumpled joint. Rumble yelped.

“Wait wait--”

“Aw, stop bein’ s-such a wuss. It’s not that bad,” Frenzy snarked. “You’ve gotten dented up worse before. L-lots of times!” Despite his words, though, he stayed close to his brother, never more than an arm’s length away, his field rippling with worry/anger.

“The boss is on the other side of the city,” Buzzsaw reported, gliding into the room and landing neatly above their little huddle. “But he’s coming. Don’t worry--Soundwave will make those glitchheads regret ever being sparked.”

“No!”

Rumble’s outburst caught them all by surprise. Flipsides stumbled back, dropping a sliver of cracked plating onto the floor, and Buzzsaw mantled his wings, twisting his helm to regard the scowling little mechkin. “What--”

“No,” Rumble said again, more quietly, his faceplates set into a stubborn frown. “No--we gotta take care of this ourselves. This is just like the arena--we all know the score. Soundwave … he can’t be runnin’ to our rescue all the time. Not and do what he needs ta do.” He looked up, taking in Flipsides’ apprehensive expression, Buzzsaw’s silent, watchful pose. “We gotta teach these tin drone humpers a lesson ourselves.”

“Teach ‘em that if they me-mess with our cohort, they’ll regret it,” Frenzy added, a solid, vengeful presence at his brother’s back.

Buzzsaw rustled his flightplates. "Not that I'm knocking your plan, but how we gonna get back at 'em? Half those mecha are in the brig right now! And how’s it gonna help anyone if we tangle with a whole company of frontliners, and Soundwave has to come for us anyway?"

Dark little wings unfolded from their tight spiral around a plump purple chassis, as optics like embers kindled in the shadows of a strut overhead. “From the brig? They’ll be let out next shift. And we really only need to make an example of one mech,” Ratbat pointed out, ears swivelling like tiny radar dishes.

Rumble grinned as Flipsides bent to attend to his arm again. “Yeah, yeah! So we just need ta lure him out somewhere. We’ll need bait.” Rumble jerked his chin up at the girders overhead.

“Wait, what--” squeaked Ratbat.

“And then we gotta figure out a way to take ‘im down, give ‘im what ‘e deserves…” Rumble frowned, looking around. Him n’ Frenzy n’ Buzzsaw against one big mech… sounded like a fair fight to him. And Rumble wasn’t much a fan of fair fights. He glanced up to his sibling.

Frenzy shifted his weight, thinking. “H-hey ‘Sides,” he said slowly. “You still got any’a S-stent’s specials?”

Flipsides blinked. “Well I, uhm. That is, I suppose I might have….”

Rumble and Frenzy exchanged fierce smiles. “Leave the arm on, Doc,” Rumble said, all his uncrumpled plating flaring with excitement. “We got work to do.”


	3. Chapter 3

“These--these are ALL your cohort-brothers?” Ravage said disbelievingly, even as he took in the sight in front of him.

“Yup!” Tripwire bounced forward, towards his carrier and the four--no, *five* other jumpframes that were perched on, next to, or scampering about the big mech. “All of us, one-two-three-four-five-six!” Each jumpframe bounced up and down in turn as Tripwire counted them off, then the entire group collapsed into giggles, flicking tails and audials held high.

Ravage turned a dumbfounded look to Tripwire’s seated carrier, who had watched the entire performance with fond indulgence. Phaseshift was a phlegmatic mech, even for a carrier, his scuffed gray and beige plating in stark contrast to the vivid colors of his cohort. The big data broker met Ravage’s astonishment with placid amusement. “What? I like jumpframes,” he said, as if that were all the explanation he needed.

Ravage shuttered his optics, hoping desperately that the world might become a little more normal once he opened them. It didn’t.

“Soundwave mentioned that you could use our help?” Phaseshift prompted gently. Ravage’s reaction, it seemed, wasn’t an unusual one.

“Ooh, ooh, pick me, I’ll help! No, pick me!” A teal and yellow pair of jumpframes chased each other across Phaseshift’s shoulderguards, chittering and squealing, spindly limbs flailing the air.

Thin, clawed fingers patted Ravage’s foreleg, and the bladeframe blinked down. “You should pick me,” said a purple jumpframe in a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m the responsible one.” Then, overcome with a sudden itch, the lithe little symbiont twisted himself around to nip at his own clockwork flank, and got a faceful of wiry, fluffy sensor-spined purple tail for his trouble. Offended, the jumpframe lunged at the appendage, which flicked insultingly just beyond his grasp.

Someone abruptly squeaked an alert, and all six of the jumpframes went tumbling, bounding in bright streaks of color back to hide behind their carrier. “Oh.” A helm promptly poked back out. “Just a twitchfly!” More helms and spindly limbs emerged, fanned audials flicking. “Yeah, duh!”

Ravage surveyed the assemblage with a resigned kind of dismay. An entire cohort of jumpframes. Primus. “--correct,” he finally answered Phaseshift, because the situation had not changed. He did need assistance, and contacting another Chronicler-cohort would take too much time.

He would simply need to work with what he had.

 

  
Jumpframe sketch, by RHPotter

*************

 

“Ugh.”

“Rough orn, huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Linebreach collapsed onto the bench with the clatter of metal on metal. His blue and gold armor was as much scuffs as color nanites, it felt like. He’d spent a miserable cycle in the brig, then been marched straight to the armory for a double shift of lifting crates of ammo and scrap, and no getting a span to refuel or recharge after the brig neither. And then he’d been kicked to the back of the med bay queue for fragging ‘encouraging’ a fight, too; was gonna be half an orn before anybody’d see to his dents and wrenched knee tensors.

“Betchya I do,” the barmech laughed. “You’re Linebreach, right? Seen any talking scraplets lately?”

Linebreach growled, talons fisted, his patience worn down to the wire. “When I find the slagger who’s been running his vocalizer--”

The barmech lifted his hands. “Easy there, big guns. It’s just talk. Mecha’ll say anything, yanno?”

“Yeah, and apparently you’re one of ‘em, spreading scrap like that around,” Linebreach snarled, talons digging into the thick slab of sheetmetal that had been pressed into service as a section of the bar.

“Now look, I don’t need any trouble here,” the smaller mech said, armor shifting forward a little in reflex. Since the Lord High Protector’s takeover of Clade Kolkular and its Tower, small establishments like this had sprung up at its base, trading highgrade for the generous rations of wargrade fuel and other equipment supplied to every mech in the swelling army. They did a very good business, but they weren’t always equipped to handle their clientele. Most of the bouncers in such places were just heavy-framed civilians; Kaon’s warframes had better things to do than stand around and look intimidating.

“Yeah? You want trouble, is that what I heard? I’m runnin’ low on charge, see, so--”

“No, no -- here, on the house. Hate to see a good customer undercharged.” The barmech quickly filled and sealed a cube, then pushed it across the slab.

Linebreach picked it up, lifting the fuel to the light. There wasn’t much of the liquid, but it glowed a pale peach-pink. Good highgrade, then, with just enough mercury to give it an effervescent kick. “‘Preciate the consolation, mech,” Linebreach said, tone instantly lighter. The higher-ups didn’t look kindly on bots who threatened local merchants, no matter what their rank. While a little strong-arming happened, and was generally overlooked, there was no sense inviting trouble by pushing his luck. Linebreach tucked the cube safely away in his subspace, and pushed back from the slab. “I’ll just go someplace nice to enjoy this, yeah?”

Chuckling, Linebreach shoved his way out past other patrons, checking a rickety haulerframe with his shoulder as he went andn leaving a dent in the civvie’s cheap plating. Outside, the chill of Kaon seeped in under his armor, nipping at protometal and delicate circuitry. Linebreach clamped his armor tight as he stalked across the metal walkway, feeling his brief good mood fade.

That fragging barmech … the story would be all over the division within the orn. It wasn’t even fair! It wasn’t like Linebreach had been the only one to see the fragging micro-mecha, but frag if anyone was talking. Not even Redshift, that ungrateful, nanognat-infested recycler drone. Fragger owed him big time for this.

A few turns took him out to the rim of an overlook. This had been one of Kolkular’s sitting gardens once, where fine crystal pavilions had once clustered around the base of the massive Tower. Now, the latticed walls were torn down, the decadence sold on the burgeoning market -- real trade, no more black market! -- to fund the army. But the spot still had a commanding view of the lights of Kaon, a vast spread of busy industry that spread almost as far as the optic could see.

The battered blue and gold frontliner sighed, resting elbows on the railing -- just for a breem, just until his backstruts quit aching. At least he wasn’t one’a them fraggers down there, in the undulating blanket of lights that was the rest of Kaon. Linebreach idly flicked a shard of colored silica glass off the rail, listening to it chime as it fell. Maybe it’d smash into some poor sap down there, yeah, and then someone would be having themselves a worse orn than he was. That’d be nice.

Who would’a guessed he’d end up here? Back when this place had belonged to Clade Kokular, someone like Linebreach would never have been allowed within a filum of this Tower, let alone inside. But the world was changing--and for the better, as far as he was concerned.

Pulling out his ill-gotten gains, Linebreach studied the little cube of fuel, watching the city lights twinkle through the refined energon. It was so dense it glowed, and he could feel his systems charging, readying themselves in anticipation of its fiery kick. Yeah, tomorrow was gonna be a better orn. He was a Decepticon, after all, and a veteran frontliner. With the Lord Protector in charge, they were the lords of Kaon, and all those weaklings down below were good for was whimpering for whatever scraps the warframes decided to give them. “Yeah. Beg all you want--all you fraggers can go frag yourselves,” he said, saluting the city with the cube. “It’s OUR time now.” He tilted his helm to throw back the fuel--

\--and a streak of purple dived out of the darkness, snatching it out of his talons.

Caught flatfooted, Linebreach gaped at his empty hand, then swung around after the … boltbat? Had a *boltbat* just stolen his highgrade?

The shape was unmistakable, the tiny flares of rudimentary thrusters winking briefly against the darkness as the boltbat dived away, cube dangling from its talons. It navigated a tangle of cables effortlessly, swooping between them with its prize, and a metallic, cackling cry echoed back through the air, mocking him.

Frag it--now even the fragging vermin were laughing at him!

“Slagging filthy--!” He transformed one arm, firing a few plasma bolts after the thing. But that fragging boltbat was tiny and fast, weaving between latticed ornamental screens and support pillars for cover, and none of his shots even came close. And, frag, he didn’t want to hit his fuel! Growling, Linebreach transformed, launching himself forward with a roar of his engine. That was HIS highgrade, slaggit! He’d be smelted in the Pit before he let a winged cyberrat take it from him!

The whip of the wind against his armor only fuelled his determination, his focus narrowing down to the chase and his target. The smooth metal of the walkway flashed beneath him, antigravs revving as he hurtled through twists and turns with a frontliner’s speed. He might not be an airframe, but it didn’t matter--that little fragger would have to land eventually. There was no way a slagging oversized boltbat was going to outrun him!

The thing must’ve realized it was being chased. Folding its wings, it dived straight down, heading for the labyrinthine lower levels farther from the Tower, and Linebreach skidded into a hard turn, accelerating down an off-ramp with a snarl. This wasn’t Vos; Kaon had been built for grounders, with innumerable roadways snaking throughout its sprawling environs. He careened from grand causeways down into the narrow, ever-shifting tangles of the slums, as other groundframes shouted and honked, veering to either side as he sped past. They all gave way, though; Kaon’s civilians had learned fast to respect the Decepticon insignia. Good thing too, ‘cause if they hadn’t, they would’ve gotten a plasma cannon shoved up their tailpipes.

Linebreach screeched around a slow-moving hauler, piling on more speed as he fishtailed down another set of switchbacks. The boltbat was still heading downward, a darting flicker of purple, almost impossible to distinguish against the shadowed structures around him, but Linebreach had him in a target-lock--the fragger might be out of range, but it wasn’t out of sight. Not for a warframe.

Veering wildly, the boltbat shot into an alley, a thin crack like a knifescar between two listing industrial complexes above. “Gotcha, ya verminous runt,” Linebreach snarled, not caring who heard. Burdened with the stolen cube, the boltbat would never gain altitude fast enough to escape. The frontliner threw himself into a side-swiping skid, transformation seams opening in a whirlwind of blades. Sharp edges of his pedes finding sure purchase in the debris, Linebreach flung himself into the alley at a run, cannon ready. Trash and scrapweed went flying as he charged forward, scarlet optics intent on his prey. The signal had stopped moving, and he was so close--

The narrow alley widened unexpectedly, into the remnants of an old courtyard or unused plaza. Bordered by high, rust-stained blank walls, the empty space was filled with trash and debris, bits of metal and silicon not even worth recycling, but simply piled up and left for the autophages. The thing’s den, no doubt. A nanoklik to scan the area, and he found his quarry. Perched on a tangle of rusted scaffolding, the boltbat was hunched over its prize, talons wrapped possessively around the cube, peering out with beady optics from behind a listing pile of stripped gears.

Snarling, Linebreach stepped forward, lifting one arm as he locked in his target. “That’s right, you fragger. Just stay right there--” He would have to be careful--he didn’t want to hit the cube. His cannon glowed with charge, primed and ready.

The boltbat sniffed, too stupid to realize its imminent demise. Chittering, it lowered its muzzle to the cube, as if about to guzzle the contents, and Linebreach lunged in alarm. “Don’t you slaggin’ dare--!”

Teeth like an alloygator erupted from the debris beneath one pede, snapping shut on one ankle-joint with the screech of metal on metal. Razored edges sliced past transformation joints, through the thinner plating at the joint, and dug deep into his pede, sending off a cascade of agonized pain reports. Linebreach roared in surprise and pain, jerking backwards, losing his target-lock--and the thing hit the end of its chain and clamped onto his ankle-joint even deeper as he tried to yank free. “What the frag--?” A trap? Someone actually thought a pathetic trap like *this* would hold a warframe? Levelling his armgun, he fired, destroying the primitive device with pinpoint precision, leaving only fragmented shrapnel behind.

He scowled at the deep gouges in his pede, his systems running hot with frustration and battle-charge. The armor was crumpled, some interior lines compromised, but the damage was minor; self-repair was already working busily to seal off and reroute around the affected areas. If this was an ambush, it was a stupid one. He scanned the empty plaza, but in the nanoklik it had taken him to free himself, the boltbat had disappeared. Along with his highgrade. “Frag it!” He pivoted, looking for his ambushers -- and for more telltale disturbances in the scrap and debris. “Come out, you slagging cowards! You wanna take on a warframe, I’m right here. Come get some! Yeah, bring it!”

Nothing happened; the cul-de-sac was empty and echoing. Cursing viciously, Linebreach stomped his way toward the place the oversized boltbat had last been, pausing along the way to blast three more scuffed-up spots where something might be buried. Slagging bit of smelter scum had to’ve retreated into the yawning gaps among the broken transport drone chasses and other debris.

Linebreach folded his flamethrower out, slotting it with the barrel of his cannon. Frag his cube -- He’d burn the fragging boltbat out of its hole!

Just as soon as he figured out why the holes were melting.

Like strange, fanged mouths, the gaps yawned slowly, or closed, or twisted as if in pain, dripping down in technicolor ribbons. And … the walls were bending now, too, heaving in oddly organic swells, like something living had taken up residence behind the battered sheetmetal. Rust spread and retreated across the bowing surface; shadows darted among the debris underpede.

Linebreach shook his helm hard, rebooting his optics. It only helped for a moment, and then the walls were dripping down again, while darting wisps of mist coiled and hissed like razorsnakes, fogging the air. What. The. Frag? He turned on unsteady pedes, staggering for balance as the world tilted sideways, gravity shifting and fluxing. The dingy scrap choking the plaza had become a carpet of bright edges and glittering points, even as his systems threw so many conflicting errors at him, he couldn’t figure out which to look at first. Down below, something rustled in the razored surface underpede.

“Hey,” said a voice.

Linebreach jerked, stumbling as he cast about. He knew that piping voice. It was--it was …

“Hey fragger, down here!”

Linebreach tried to focus his optics, to bring his systems back in sync--where had his target-lock gone? The ground went all fuzzy, and he staggered back, fighting to stay upright. The dingy plaza was suddenly saturated with colors, all of them moving, shifting sickeningly ... but just there, a patch of rusty red seemed to have more direction than the rest.

“The fr-frag -- who are --” Linebreach started, glossa thick in his buccal unit, vocalizer staticky with errors.

Big golden optics blinked up at him; the red smear scuttled closer. And then split into two smears, three … the blobs were hard to track, despite his best efforts, skittering through the jungle of optic-searing colors. “Remember us, slagger? Ya like to kick around scraplets, so we thought we’d help ya out.”

Another blob lunged forward, and Linebreach jerked back, firing wildly. Blobs chittered, scattering in all directions as trash exploded under the impact of the blasts, cackling in a cacaphony of overlapping voices.

“Talking scraplets, huh?”

“You wanted to play with us, so here w-we are!”

“C’mon, you underclocked piece of scrap--you want a piece of this? Come get it!”

“Yeah, before we-”

“-chew you down to our size-”

“-play g-gambado with your bearings-”

“-gnaw on your struts-!”

“See the thing ya forgot about scraplets-”

“-is that we got a lotta friends-”

“-and even more TEETH!” The voices dissolved into a chittering, grinding wave of sound, and Linebreach shrieked in pain as the blobs all lunged, flying through the air, a hundred hungry sawblade mouths fastening themselves onto his armor. He fought, flinging them away, firing blindly even as he staggered and fell under a swell of unnatural gravity. But there were always more, seeping out of the walls, lunging from the ground underneath his flailing chassis, cackling and laughing even as they ate him alive--

Linebreach roared in outrage and pain, lashing out with talons and targeted fire. But his shots were off, his targeting fritzing, refusing to align. The round, saw-toothed maws of the scraplets threw off ghostly afterimages, fading in and out of the curling, hissing misty tendrils in the air, and his shots missed more often than hit, exploding against the heaving walls, illuminating the nightmarish scene with fire and destruction. What was--where did--? Nothing seemed to make sense!

He grabbed a scraplet in mid-leap for his faceplates, crushing the wretched thing in a taloned grip and hurling it away. A trap! This was all a trap--he had to get away, to regroup, before the talking scraplets chewed him into nothing but a million fragments of poisoned color--desperate, he transformed, shifting into his alt and slewing around, looking for the exit. The dark maw of his escape seemed to twist and shift, but he was past caring; gunning his engine, he shot for it, even as scraplets gnawed on his antigravs, his fins, hooked talons gouged deep into his plating.

A wall loomed out of wavering lines of nothing, and Linebreach dodged -- the wrong way, somehow, and dented metal screeched like a howl from the Pit as he skidded along the battered surface. His nanites and bits of substructure glittered like a long streak of stars behind him, twisting into whorls and runes, leaking into the air as a fine spray but no that was -- frag! -- they’d gotten into his hydraulics, the talking scraplets, laughing, laughing as they ate him alive, gnawing grinding teeth everywhere, everything…

Wailing, a stuttering roar of terror and rage, Linebreach fired frantically. He fumbled the commands for his own missile racks, nearly triggering one while inside his own plating -- Primus! -- then managed to lever the weapons up. The ballistic weaponry ignited, trailing blossoming streamers of fiery plasma that drifted on the eddies like petals of rust.

The alleyway exploded. Half-slagged, the massive industrial girders failed, sheetmetal slumping like metalmesh, like organic fabric, and Linebreach tried to slow -- he’d hide beneath the soft and dripping folds until the scraplets had gone -- but they were *still* here, technicolor parasites under his plating, taking mouthfuls of fine wire and protometal while the inferno raged --

The firestorm, funneled by the tall walls, blasted Linebreach out into the street. He bowled over a minibot, tumbled through the front of a merchant’s stall and then out the back loading dock in a cyclone of flaming debris. Every chunk trailed hot afterimages of fiery teeth, eating, devouring--

“Talking s-scraplets!” Linebreach screamed, crashing through a pair of dumbfounded servicemecha, their once-immaculate white plating no longer so pristine. “Run’ll eat chew you apart -- millions of ‘em -- run!” He shoved them forward, out of the way of another sickening, chittering fanged wave of scraplets, spinning and firing a few more blasts at the oncoming horde. “Run!” Dimly, through the screech of metal and the roar of explosions, he heard mecha yelling, vocalizers crackling with fear. But his battle protocols were fully engaged, reporting multiple targets, a dizzying number for such close-quarters combat and he’d expended all his large ordinance and they were crawling on him, leaping through the air, even up from fissures that cracked open beneath his pedes--

Hard talons latched on to his pauldrons, spun him around. “--I said, stand DOWN!” Linebreach had only a moment to register the angry purple and black faceplates of a military enforcer. Then a taloned fist crashed into his helm, sending him reeling backwards. He staggered, desperately trying to stay upright. If he went down, he wouldn’t stand a chance--the scraplets would swarm over him, eat him alive!

“Sir--w-watch out! The scraplets, they’re--!” There! There was a wave of them, climbing up the enforcer’s chestplate! Linebreach pointed desperately, forgetting as he did so that his arm was still in cannon-mode. “They’re on you, get it--” A emp-blast hit him from the side, overloading his systems; as he fell, two more military enforcers stepped up, weapons at the ready, scarlet optics hard and unrelenting. Their purple and black armor seemed to glow luridly against the pall of smoke around them, the chittering laughter of scraplets rising to a mocking chorus as Linebreach crashed to the ground, unable to do anything to break his fall.

He twitched feebly, his limbs spasming with aftershocks, his vocalizer offline. _//Scraplets-//_ he commed desperately. _//-r everywhere--//_

The first enforcer stepped forward, prodded him with one heavy pede. His mandibles twisted in a disgusted sneer. “Pathetic. Scraplets? You been crawling through the slums, Centurion? Never thought I’d see a bot lose his helm like this over three fragging scraplets -- unless you got more chewing away inside that helm of yours, you glitched piece of smelting pit scum.”

“Looks like he’s higher than a Seeker sucking helium, Commander,” said a pair of black and purple-armored legs. Colored lights danced over them, and so did the scraplets, laughing all the while with gaping maws and jagged teeth.

_//S-seekers! Call them, air support, k-kill them rain down fire -- the talking ‘raplets--//_

“Primus.” The commander turned away. “Get him up. And get those offa him. Last thing we need is an infestation in the brig. I have a feeling he’s gonna be there for a while.”

 

**************

 

The little bar had been quiet since the incident with the frontliner, and mecha hunched over their cubes in the dim warmth. The next millitary main-shift was due to start in a joor -- most of the regulars had cleared out, a few more trickled in as their watches ended. A cluster of civvies and Decepticon rejects nursed their cubes in a corner. Spreadsheet sighed, facial plating falling into a customary frown as he tallied up the last shift’s net take. Eighty-five wargrade rations, handful of parts, thirty grams of cybertronium… enough to clear even on this place and the highgrade he’d dispensed. Maybe.

Would’ve been a lot easier without Linebreach. Slagging frontliners thought they could take whatever scrap they wanted, so long as an army enforcer weren’t watching. Hadn’t been a lot in the grand scheme of things, maybe, but pay a dozen bribes like that a shift, and things got tough. ‘Course, if the warframes got inta a brawl -- and they fought over slagging *everything* -- well, that was worse, wasn’t it? Everything got dented up, took orns to bang the place back together. So Spreadsheet paid. Slaggers.

Someone had left talon-scores in the thick metal slab of the bar. One of the warframes had traded him a scouring-buffer, the pads mostly worn down, but it’d do well enough on this old chunk of metal. Now where had he put the thing? Somewhere underneath….

The hatch hissed open.

The sudden wariness and startled flares in the patrons’ overlapping fields alerted Spreadsheet first. Scrubber clutched uselessly in one hand, Spreadsheet pushed himself upright, ready for anything.

The hatch hissed closed. But no one had entered. Or at least -- Spreadsheet followed the optics of his customers. Then he leaned out over the bar and looked down.

Two miniature -- no, mechkin -- two mechkin were marching inside like they owned the place, bold as anything. The blue one cast a pugnacious glare impartially around the cramped bar. The red one… carried a cube of fuel. A familiar cube of fuel.

Optics widening, Spreadsheet watched as the two mechkin hoisted themselves atop one of the tall blocks that served as barstools. There was room on the stool for both of them to stand. The scruffy yellow patron on the next seat rebooted his optics, then studied his own half-consumed cube suspiciously, as if it might be to blame.

“Here,” said the red mechkin, reaching up to scoot the small cube of fuel onto the bar. Spreadsheet gaped at the highgrade, then switched his incredulous gaze to the familiar purple insignia on the little mech’s chestplate.

“C-courtesy of Soundwave,” added the blue one.

Spreadsheet’s vocalizer cracked as he reset the device. “Wha-- how-- _who_?” he managed, but wasted no time in swiping up the cube of proffered fuel. It was just like it’d been a joor ago, still sealed and the energon untouched.

“Soundwave. Yeah, the n-newest tribunus,” one of the mechkin said, while the reddish one boosted his aft onto the bar. The little guy ignored the scuffed yellow patron, who muttered something about letting pets climb the furniture. The blue mechkin, though, gestured a shockingly rude reply that had the bigger bot rebooting his optics again.

“Right. The newest, uh, tribunus?” Spreadsheet managed.

“T-he one with ten thousand audials? Kept an alloygator the size of this bar? Drove a Tower clade mad and went hand to hand with a G-guardian… and won? Can turn hisself invisible? Fought L-lord Megatron to a standstill -- and Megatron *never made him yield?* No? Seriously?” the blue mechkin demanded.

“I ‘erd that,” a dingy, low-ranked Centurian said abruptly. “I mean, I heard the Lord Protector sparred someone, and didn’t kill ‘im, n’ never made ‘im yield, neither.”

“Maybe ya’all ain’t heard the name yet--” The red mechkin leaned in. “--but ya will. Lemme tell you *all* about ‘im….”

 

**************

 

Soundwave had a dossier on Fastlane -- as, indeed, he maintained on all the agents assigned to him. And while that report was evidently far from complete, he knew this much: Fastlane was not a mech who left matters to chance.

Armed with that data, and with his master’s analysis of Fastlane’s activities, Ravage had been very busy indeed over the last cycle and a half. The Senate forces in Nyon had to be given just enough information to expose Fastlane’s activities, without endangering the Decepticon cause as a whole or creating suspicion. To that end, Ravage had carefully laid false data-trails, visited several of Fastlane’s safehouses, and put certain holes in a few of the IDs the agent habitually used. 

He had also, after careful consultation with his Master, leaked a certain Decepticon encryption code key to another Enforcer informant. Doing so was risky; if the Senate-allied officials found out about the code too quickly, it could jeopardize the very Decepticon cells Ravage was trying to save, to say nothing of other agents placed in Nyon and neighboring city-states. But Soundwave had judged it to be an acceptable risk. It would take time for that information to be relayed up to Senate intelligence from the field. By the time anyone but the local Enforcers knew the code, Soundwave would have ensured that new encryptions were in place, the codes distributed through secure channels.

Now, with only a dozen joors remaining until the ill-omened assault against the Enforcers was due to begin, Ravage rested, frame loose and relaxed across the heating vents of a mechanic’s rooftop. From here, he had a commanding view of the street below, and the open-air dispensary across the busy thoroughfare.

Loitering there were two Enforcers, their stark, silver-white plating gleaming as they savored their rations, watching the mecha passing by while--to all appearances--taking a brief break from their duties. Most mecha gave them a fair amount of space, but not noticeably so--here, away from the slums, Enforcers were still more respected than feared. A few even stopped to exchange greetings. Ravage watched as a triad of higher-ranking foundation mecha drove by, to courteous acknowledging pings. Two other civilian mecha--couriers, judging not only by their insignia, but their stripped down, streamlined frames--stopped to deliver priority data-packets, then sped away, their alts blurring into bright streaks of color through the busy streets.

Then Fastlane appeared. His appearance had changed; his plating was clean and the colors bright, a far cry from the dingy, scuffed appearance he had assumed when meeting with the refugees. He weaved casually through the traffic currents of Nyon’s midlevel streets; to all appearances just another mech going about his daily business. Reaching the roadway’s edge, he transformed, stepping off and strolling towards the dispensary. Punching in his code into the automated machinery, he withdrew his chosen ration, pinging the Enforcers a casual greeting in the process. One of the Enforcers gave the mech a casual nod, said something--Ravage upped the gain on his audials, filtering out the background noise to focus in on the distant conversation.

“--another orn. Bit of energon before your duty-shift, Markdown?”

“Yup.” Fastlane replied easily. “Another busy shift coming up--gotta get this quarter-vorn’s expense reviews and recommendations pushed out.” He turned, taking a gulp of energon. “Gotta run, have a good orn, Enforcers--” And under the farewell comm-glyphs was the packet Ravage had been watching for. Broken down into pieces too small to attract attention, Fastlane slipped the data-packet over to the waiting mecha even as he headed for the door.

Ravage’s vantage point offered him a perfect view of the two Enforcer’s faceplates and fields. It took them only an astrosecond to unpack the data and reassemble it into a coherent whole, and he watched in satisfaction as their expressions hardened, going intent and predatory. Fastlane had intended to give the Enforcers information on when and where the Decepticon sympathizers would attack--and he had. But he’d done it under a now-compromised ID, and attached to that packet was a very simple, very subtle virus, one meant to infiltrate the Enforcer network. A virus that--as Ravage well knew, since he was the one who had planted it--that used those same compromised ciphers. Enforcers were smart mecha. They knew a hack when they saw one.

The Enforcers tossed back the remainder of their energon, then stood up. Almost out the door, Fastlane glanced back--and froze as the two larger mecha advanced on him. “Is there something wr--”

“Wrong? Possibly.” The senior Enforcer of the two stepped sideways, casually flanking the smaller mech. “You’re going to need to come with us, citizen.”

“Come with--? There must be some mistake, officers. I-I have a great deal of work assigned, and I can’t just--” Fastlane backpedalled out into the avenue, the two Enforcers matching him pace for pace, flanking him like Sharkticons on the hunt.

“You can't?” the second Enforcer growled, impatient. “Frag that. Under Senate edict 567412.35, you will submit yourself to Enforcer authority and questioning as a suspected sympathizer of the Protectorate and traitor to Cybertron. Any attempt at resistance will be taken as evidence against you in this investigation.”

Every inch the frightened citizen, Fastlane backed up half a step, palms upturned and empty. “I -- I honestly don’t know -- you’ve got the wrong --” Ravage flicked an audial, forwarded a ping to Soundwave. He could see it when all of Fastlane’s encryption key trees -- the convoluted pathways of the Decepticon network that made it appear to the spy as if he’d gone undiscovered -- collapsed in a sparkbeat.

As the burly Enforcer reached for him, Fastlane jerked up one forearm, triggering a lightning-fast transformation. The Enforcer reeled back, howling a shocked and gurgling cry -- like technicolor ribbons in the neon lights, a sheaf of needler spines stood up from his thin face and cervical plates, their slender, glowing ends quivering. The second Enforcer roared, patrons flinging themselves flat to the ground, chaos spreading now across the street. Someone fired, a volley of bolts that slammed into walls and nearby mecha alike -- through the chaos, Ravage caught a glimpse of Fastlane fleeing, the edge of one pauldron trailing smoke. He hadn’t been hurt badly, Ravage was relieved to note. The second Enforcer raced after the fleeing spy, pausing just long enough to jerk the deadly needles from his companion’s plating, shouting out orders over the local security channel. _//Mech down, mech down! Have a 3-5-11 ongoing, priority one, southern quadrant of--//_ Then the Enforcer local encryption caught up with the blurted message, blurring the meaning of the glyphs, but Ravage had heard enough.

Something glinted in the air, gone in a blur as it zipped after the fleeing spy and pursuing Enforcer alike. The tiny tracker-drone, monitored by Flipsides, would shadow the spy’s progress -- but Ravage could guess where Fastlane was headed. The spy would doubtless make for one of his many caches of equipment and credentials secreted throughout the district. He would find the concealed pods empty, the credits and devices already scavenged by all the slum dwellers to whom Ravage had transmitted the geolocating data.

With any kind of luck, Fastlane, finding himself without the resources to hide and without the credentials to escape the city, would lead the district’s massing enforcers on a very merry chase. If it culminated in his capture, then so much the better. Ravage wouldn’t even need to bother with arranging for an assassination; Fastlane was far too low in rank to have any useful intel, and Soundwave had already ensured that the spy’s codes and encryption keys had all been deactivated.

Thoroughly satisfied, Ravage stood and stretched luxuriously, foreclaws scraping the pipes, unkinking each of the spiked flanges of spine and tail. Best to retreat now, before the rest of the Enforcer unit cordoned off the district.

Now, his real work could begin.


	4. Chapter 4

Soundwave no longer collected his energon from the military’s common dispensers. It was a minor benefit of his new rank, but one he appreciated. His was a distinctive frame, all too easy to spot in a crowd of compact warframes. In the crowded confines of the dispensary, he tended to draw both optics and attention, the press of too many jealous and violent thoughts like a river of plasma flowing around him.

Checking up on the units of his far-flung little division, however, did require a certain amount of travel. This travel was best accomplished by air-skimmer, for the most part, often in the company of others. It was on such a flight to one of Kaon’s outlying districts, just as the skimmer settled into dock, that Soundwave glanced up from his datapad, alerted by an oddly speculative thread of thought -- apparently from one of the junior officers. Unease and doubt, nervousness, snarled flickers of battle-excitement …. Soundwave plucked the emotions from the midweight warframe’s cortex as easily as he did a name: Blazetrail. Observing the mech from behind his visor, he watched as Blazetrail stole another glance at the big carrier.

The landing jolted through the skin of the lightweight aircraft with a low rumble. As the ship came to a halt, Soundwave tucked the pad into subspace and stood slowly, weight carefully balanced. The warframe likely wouldn’t try anything here, but perhaps after disembarking....

The junior officer shifted from pede to pede, optics flicking from Soundwave to the slowly lowering exit hatch. Blazetrail leaned forward, cleared his vocalizer. “So, uhm.” He cleared his vocalizer again. “I uh--heard that you were a gladiator. In the Kaon arena. When Lord Megatron was. Yanno, fought beside him, and scrap. Is it true?”

 _What?_ Taken aback and glad for his mask, Soundwave regarded the junior officer with blank incomprehension, struggling to keep control of his field as he scanned through his records. Lord Megatron had visited the arena some twenty vorns ago, but never fought there to his knowledge. And Soundwave was fairly certain he would have remembered, had he himself participated in the brutal chaos of the performances there.

Blazetrail’s surface thoughts swirled with fragmented doubt, curiosity, and agitated admiration as Soundwave picked through them; they made even less sense than his words. “As … a professional gladiator, I mean. There’s this footage...” The warframe hurried on. “I just… uh ….” Soundwave’s visor was a reflective blank, giving nothing away. The warframe’s plating tucked a little tighter to his frame. “You were standing with him, see, but…” Blazetrail’s vocalizer trailed off.

The exit hatch settled to the ground, extending into a convenient access ramp. The big carrier’s field was as blank as his visor, eerily still, an abyss a mech could fall into and never hit bottom .... At a loss, Blazetrail straightened to attention. “Uh, S-sir. I mean, is it true, Sir?” Silence settled over them, all but tangible, muffling, as if he were being catalogued down to his very last gear. Blazetrail resisted the impulse to shake his helm -- it felt like his audials were ringing. No mech should be so… so damned _still._

"Blazetrail: is dismissed," Soundwave hazarded, monotone cloaking any trace of his confusion. Light glinted across Soundwave’s visor, as if the taller mech had inclined his helm, just a bare fraction, towards the hatch. Gasping a sharp ventilation, Blazetrail broke, scurrying for the exit. He didn't even work in the same division as the big mech, how had--!? He could feel the weight of that implacably level regard, following him all the way out.

Still uncertain as to what had just happened, Soundwave stood impassively while the rest of the military passengers hurriedly gathered their belongings. The odd glances they cast him made little sense, their surface thoughts even less. What on Cybertron…? On a hunch, he pinged his symbionts.

_//W-what’s up Boss?//_

_//Yeah, what’s up?//_

_//W-we didn’t do nothin’, just s-so you know.//_

_//Yeah, it’s not our fault. We didn’t do nuthin’.//_

_//T-totally nothin’!//_

Soundwave wondered if this was what a fragmented processor felt like. _//Rumble, Frenzy: have much to explain,//_ he told them while the other warframes filed out, giving him as wide a berth as the small craft allowed.

 

******

 

The band of rebels wasn’t hard to find. Though to be honest, Ravage wasn’t certain they deserved the glyph, modified or otherwise. ‘Rebel’ implied a rough level of organization, a kind of lean violence. The mecha now congregating in a disused square near the barracks enframed none of those things.

“--oh well, fragadoodledoo, Hatchback. Them fighters ain’t coming for Pit nor Prime, and we’re out here in the street with a slagbucket of illegal--”

“Keep it down! I told you, we just have to wait a little--”

“You’re a dipstick, Hatchback -- fraggin’ rusty nuts, we’re *all* dipsticks, standing out here like a bunch of slagging shimbeaters…”

Perhaps three dozen battered mecha milled in the small plaza, most of them clustered in tight, whispering knots. Their voices were low but sharp with anger; the sound carried. To Ravage’s optics, the gathering was painfully obvious. Short of sending out holo-notices proclaiming ‘Disaffected Mecha Here: Riot In Progress’, they couldn’t have been more noticeable if they had tried. He allowed himself one lash of his bladed tail in aggravation, then rose to his pedes and padded silently towards the group.

“Now look,” Hatchback straightened, trying to exert some modicum of authority, while mecha nearby shifted their small, cobbled together weapons uneasily. The motley assortment ranged from rust-spotted target blasters to lengths of rusty pipe and work tools, with the ratio skewed largely towards the latter. A few of the mecha, perhaps two or three, likely had inbuilt weaponry. It wasn’t much for Ravage to work with. But then, that seemed to be the pattern of the orn, didn’t it? “Just because you were in the military don’t mean you can use that kind of langu--”

“Fraggin’ cogwaffles! How many times I gotta tell you? Left that function behind a long time ago. I’m a fragging poet now, and don’t you forget it, or I’ll use yer helm for a--”

No, ‘rebels’ most certainly wasn’t the right glyph at all. Still, they were all that he had. Ravage heaved a deep vent. Then he prowled out of the darkness.

Passive sensor sweeps caught him first. The big bladeframe had made no attempt to avoid detection, though he still got far closer than he should have. If he had been an Enforcer ... Mecha turned, suspiciously scanning the alleyways--then, when they found nothing, glanced lower as the movement registered. Several reset their optics, falling silent in surprise. Helms turned, mecha shifting their weapons nervously, unsure of how to react to the newcomer. Friend or foe? It wasn’t an Enforcer--but the symbiont was also not the warframed reinforcements they had been expecting.

Ravage sat. He studied the small mob with a critical optic, surveying them up and down. “Is this all of you?” he said at last, shrugging one long blade of plating up to expose the Lord High Protector’s sigil, as violently purple as spilled core energon.

“Frag me, the turbopussy _*talks*_ ,” gasped a mech, quickly hushed by his neighbors.

Hatchback took a step forward. “You’re... you’re the help that Kaon sent?” The drab mech queried hesitantly, poorly concealing his dismay.

“Scrap that -- you’re the _*only*_ help that Kaon sent?” That was from the heavy warframe-turned-poet, who didn’t bother to hide his disdain. “That’s it. We’re fragged.”

Ravage restrained himself from another sparkfelt vent. They had very little sense of secrecy, these mecha. “You were expecting something else?” he replied, optics narrowed. “A battalion of warframes crashing through Formidex’s walls to aid you, perhaps?” He let the ridiculousness of that idea sink in.

“Well, uh … I guess not. B-but what can you--?” Hatchback stammered.

Ravage slanted him a scornful look. “More than you can imagine.” He swept his scarlet gaze across the assembled mecha. “My master is careful and clever, and has sent the best possible agent at his disposal to aid you. The rest of my team is already inside, preparing your way.” Ravage very carefully did not mention what *kind* of team.

Mecha murmured among each other, comms flying thick in the air. “So… well I…” Hatchback rubbed at the back of his helm nervously. “Where’s Fastlane? And do you have a… a plan, I mean? We’ve still gotta get all them fraggers out, so we can move back to our homes, and then--”

“Fastlane has prepared you for this moment, but now he has another role to play. As for the plan,” Ravage fixed the tan-striped mech with a level gaze, “-- it has changed. You cannot defend your homes against the Enforcers with Formidex still in thrall to the Senate. The moment the Enforcers returned, your homes would instead become cells.” There was a distinct ripple of unease at that, with several mecha at the rear taking a few steps backwards. “This is our new objective. Your team will move in fast, and strip everything of value you can carry. Take as much you can, quickly and quietly, then retreat.” Ravage spoke over the rising babble of protests. “And if any of you have objections, leave now. We cannot afford to hesitate any longer. This is likely the best--and possibly the only--chance you will get.”

An uneasy silence descended. “I’m not --” A mech in the back of the crowd stuttered. “What good is--”

“You will have the tools of your trades, and all the weapons and energon you can carry. These things will buy you time, help you find new places of safety. Your former home, however, cannot be taken from the Enforcers--not for long. Formidex is theirs; but his focus is on defending from outside threats. He will not care about what happens to the contents of one small Enforcer precinct within his domain, not until he is ordered to. If we move swiftly, what lies within will be yours. Now, if any of you lack the spark to stand with your fellows, then leave.” Ravage stood, turned, tail lashing and helm high. “Those who remain: you wished the Lord High Protector’s aid, and you will have it--but only if you are willing to fight for your future.”

Ravage waited, the heavy, bladed tip of his tail flicking. He was no orator, but it was easy enough to call upon a few of Laserbeak’s shared memory-files for the necessary skills. He watched as the nervous mecha conferred, shuffled. A few melted away, slipping down nearby alleys. But most stayed. One mech stepped forward, clutching a cutting torch. The next followed him, and the next, civilian mecha falling into ragged ranks. It was a little disturbing, the ease with which these desperate mecha were intimidated; it did not bode well for their chances of success. Ravage could only hope their bravery would weight the odds in their favor.

He nodded slowly. “Very well. Pair up, leave this alley in groups no larger than four. Do nothing to draw suspicion. We will meet at these coordinates, behind the precinct, in twelve breems.” He gave the mecha one last, lingering look. “Avoid the front gates. They will be… crowded.”

 

******

 

Crowded, as it turned out, was an understatement.

The distraction the little band of rebels needed was already well in progress. Working in tandem, Ravage and Soundwave had ensured that certain, carefully crafted reports would be released shortly after Fastlane’s capture. Not just rumors and unverified data-dumps, but reports inserted into official channels, disseminated by authorized data-brokers, complete with official timestamps and signatory coding. Those reports all said the same thing: that by Senate edict, the mecha of Nyon--ALL the mecha of Nyon--would have their energon allotments cut in half, their supplies reassigned to fuel the burgeoning ranks of the Enforcers.

The reaction to the news was predictable. Every function-class, every cohort and clade, from obsolete mecha already on the verge of starvation to well-fuelled, well-connected Towerlings, rose up in protest. The streets filled with mecha as they abandoned their functions to converge upon the city’s heart, broad-banding their protests and demanding answers. Nyon’s ranking officials scrambled, issuing overlapping responses--denials, retractions and defensive justifications--even as they frantically called for reinforcements, pulling Enforcers from the outlying districts to restore order and bar the angry mecha from turning words into actions.

Within two joors, almost every available street patrol had been redirected to the central district. The outlying precincts were stripped of their assigned mecha, save for a few Enforcers on internal watch, and a few small units at the gates to repel the growing crowds of malcontents.

One station in particular was nearly emptied--coincidentally enough, the Enforcers there had managed to catch a spy just before all the trouble had started, and most of the mecha stationed there had already left to take the rogue Decepticon to central headquarters….

 

*******

 

Widecast was having a terrible orn.

Almost half the station had helped to capture that fragging traitor, which meant that now they were all off getting all kinds of commendations and extra allotments, along with all the brass who could pull rank to horn in on the loot. They were even getting to see real action at the heart of the city too -- they’d probably come back with all kinds of great stories about smacking helms together and gettin’ to use the shockprods. But not Widecast, nooo. Instead he got to cover not only his own beat, but the patrols of six other slagging mecha as well.

Muttering to himself, Widecast stomped his way down the corridor, scanning doorways as he went. The secondary networking hub had to be around here somewhere, but all the fragging hallways looked just alike in this section of the station. Frag if he knew how the slumdwellers here ever found their hovels, or whatever all these little rooms were supposed to’ve been. Maybe they’d never left -- just huddled here in the dark, sucking down useful bots’ energon--’cause he’d be damned to the Pit if he could tell which section he was in. Or maybe he’d incorporated the fraggin’ map files backwards, fragitall.

Widecast heaved a vent of relief as he spotted a thick length of cabling that looked familiar. The Enforcers had done extensive rewiring of this entire block, setting it up to handle the pacification of the district. The station monitored everything: from the surveillance cameras and id-readers that tracked the movement of mecha to the banks of dedicated AI that combed through this portion of the datanet, searching for that one little blip that might hint at sedition or other trouble. All that extra hardware, plus interrogation cells, Enforcer housing, and temporary storage for a good quarter of the extra supplies entering the city -- it was a great deal to ask of one rickety apartment block, and it showed. Communications failures and minor power outages were common as civilian-grade conduits and exchanges failed under the heavy load, and guess who got to go fix them?

Why the frag Formidex had let his outer reaches fall into disrepair like this, Widecast couldn’t even begin to guess. Fragging industrial cityformers, one wall lookin’ like all the others … something at the end of a corridor caught the corner of his optic, but vanished before Widecast could turn. Glitchmouse? “You fraggin’ lettin’ vermin infest the fraggin’ place now, Formi? Primus,” Widecast muttered. He looked around, marking his position to memory, then stalked down the dim hallway.

Huh. Widecast had never heard of glitchmice makin’ a sound like that before. Real weird-like. Sounded almost like a… a giggle? He slowed his pace, stifling the sound of his pedes against the flooring as much as he could, focussing his audials on those distant, tiny little shuffling noises. They seemed to be coming from the hatchway ahead. The door had been left--or jammed open--and he could hear muffled little chirps, almost like half-words….

He swung into the open hatchway. “What the frag is going on in he--?” He stopped short as the scene before him failed to register. The organized runs of cabling and conduit had been turned into a tangled mess, pulled apart, twisted together, knotted and clipped and rewired in every possible direction. Multicolored sheaves of network cables were draped over every available surface, like they’d been turned into some bizarre kind of decorative garlands. Other cables had been pulled down from the ceiling, panels pulled right off the walls, wires grounded on furniture or spliced in haphazard knots. And hopping over and through the whole chaotic mess were … *things*. Little brightly-colored mecha-things that froze the instant he came into view.

“Uh oh!” a bright yellow and green one chirped, all six round optics wide with dismay. “Time to go gotta go bye!” Widecast barely had time to register the words before the tiny mecha were darting away, scattering with dizzying speed, disappearing into shadows and impossibly tiny crevices.

“What the--” He reflexively grabbed for one of the little things as it skittered by--only to have his claws close on thin air as the thing meeped in fear and put on a burst of extra speed, dodging between his pedes with a flicker of an exuberantly sensor-spined tail.

“You little--!” Widecast tried to turn, one pede sliding in a pile of slippery little chips -- the germanium insulation that was supposed to shield cables from interference. Glittering wafers wafted like confetti around him as he charged into the hallway after the mech-thing. The slagging thing ran on walls just as well as it did on the floor, bouncing off the surfaces like a -- another hatch bleeped as it slid open, the purple tailtip flicking through like a dart of lightning.

“Frag!” Widecast shoved his way into the darkened room, hand already transforming to ready his crowd-control railgun, optics brightening to sweep the oddly messy chamber with light. Something scuttled, and Widecast fired blindly, pellets ricocheting from every surface and scoring his armor. “Fraggin’ slag -- Formi, hit the lights!” he cursed, spitting out the code to trigger the suite’s glowlines.

The lights blinked on. “Frag me,” Widecast breathed. The vermin had been in here too. The place was a crosswired mess, multicolored cables torn apart and going everywhere, bits sparking where his bullets had torn through -- meeping and scrambling, the purple thing darted between his legs *again,* and Widecast fired after it, twisting around, the chucking cough of rail-fed pellets echoing.

That damned tail flicked out the hatch. And somehow, in all the chaos, Widecast shot the door panel.

Sparking madly, the hatch lurched mostly shut, and jammed. “Frag!” Widecast hurled himself at the tiny gap, trying to claw the door open. It budged not a micrometer.

A streak of yellow flicked by, then a tiny, pointed green face popped up just outside the door. “Haha!” squealed the vermin, sticking out its wriggly violet glossa. The face vanished before he could even bring his gun to bear.

Frag, frag, and double frag! The things were gone, but he could still hear chirps and alarm calls echoing distantly through the nearby halls. Widecast surveyed the damage the things had done -- in this room alone! -- with dismay. There was no chance he was going to be able to fix the damage; he didn’t have the schematics uploaded for this networking hub, and even if he did, it would take a fraggin’ communications specialist to put *this* mess back to rights.

“Slagging Pit-spawned vermin,” he snarled, querying the nearest terminal and getting nothing but garbled signals and network interruption errors. “Where the hell did those things come from anyway?” And how the frag was he going to report this steaming pile of slag? What the frag had they been doing, nesting? There had to be fifty of them; he couldn’t imagine just a few of the creatures doing so much damage, even if left to scurry around for several orns.

Thankfully this was only a secondary hub--the primaries were still reporting intact, for the most part, which meant that the majority of their district was was still covered. But the little mech-rodents had taken out most of the security network for the building, including the main vid-feeds and mechametrics. They’d even scrambled a fair number of the more mundane hatchway accesses and internal commlines; every time Widecast tried to run a systems check, he hit a veritable blizzard of ever-shifting redlined errors. He managed to find and replace the door control cables in the mess, enough to push the door back open and squeeze out, but soon gave up the rest as a lost cause. He didn’t care if it earned him a slagging reprimand--he was an Enforcer, not a technician, slag it!

Instead he commed the other four Enforcers still on-duty in the district, letting them know they’d need to stick to personal comms or route traffic through Central if they needed to report in. Then, engine growling, he shifted one arm back into weapon-mode, and stomped down the corridor. He didn’t know what those things were, but it didn’t matter. Frag his regular checks: it was time to go hunting for vermin.

 

*****

 

Hatchback watched anxiously as the… their guide, for lack of a better word, scaled the sheer outer wall of the precinct, talons leaving brutal parallel gouges in the toughened, blackened metal. He tensed as the shadowed form reached the upper ring of shearing, grinding blades… and somehow slipped between them, lithe as a ghost, triggering none of the sensitive mechanisms.

Then the cybercat vanished over the top. Hatchback cast an uneasy glance at his mecha, still arriving in pairs. They seemed small compared with these walls, pitiably few compared with the behemoth might of the Senate Enforcers. Had he really thought they could succeed? Really planned to… what, break down these walls, erected to keep mecha like them out?

Something clicked. With a quiet squeak, a small, grated side gate swung open. Hatchback tensed, ready to stammer some excuse -- but there were no Enforcers on the other side. Just the wide courtyard where functionless mecha had once spread and stretched their hand-woven metalmesh in preparation for sale to fine textile mills… and the big catlike mech.

“File in,” Ravage hissed, crimson gaze sweeping the little crowd. “Stay close; keep your voices low and your comms off.” He doubted that any of these mecha had good comm dampeners, or anything even remotely resembling secure encryptions, much less much practice using either effectively. Provided the jumpframes had gotten to the station’s auditory pickups, vocalizations should be safer than even short-range comms. He hoped.

Clutching their makeshift weapons, the mecha obeyed, necks craning as they looked on what the Enforcers had made of their home. Over there ... was the little plot of broken ground that Slapplate had once grown low-grade energon crystals on, then when those failed, a handful of sparkling little quartz globes. Heavy mechanisms had rolled the metal flat over the last half-vorn; nothing was left but dust. And there--there were the rivets that had once anchored the drying lines, for the big sheets of metalmesh after they came out of solution; nothing hung there now. There, on the far side of the courtyard, high above, were the pipes of the center’s little refinery, once used to produce the molecular metal brews that went into making flexible energon and hydraulic lines -- the wind whispered hollowly among the broken-off stumps, now surrounded by a bristling forest of comm-towers and directional dishes.

Hatchback drew a shuddering ventilation. This … had been their home, once. It had never been particularly beautiful, or well-regarded; but Formidex had looked after them, and they had done their best for him in turn. Unlovely and forgettable it might have been, but this block had been their sanctuary. And now … it was as if the Enforcers had stripped it down to its struts, eradicated even the memory of the mecha who had once lived there, covering it all with a veneer of cold-plated utilitarian authority.

Stepping into that courtyard, Hatchback listened to the wind moan around the walls, and realized that the strange cybercat had been telling them the truth.

None of them would ever be able to go home again.

Glancing around, he could feel that realization ripple outwards, sorrow spreading from field to field, the others’ optics glowing bright with grief and impotent anger. And Hatchback felt an old familiar twist of anger flare hot, burning stubbornly within his spark. The Senate, the Prime-- had declared them unnecessary, unwanted. Unneeded. Had taken their functions from them. Had cut their allotments again, and again, until there was almost nothing left at all. And Hatchback had been obedient. Had tried to believe it was for the good of Cybertron. Had tried to adapt and survive, like every Cybertronian should …

… and it hadn’t been enough. In the end, the Senate had taken it all: their functions, their energon, their *home* … their last remaining bit of hope.

“They’ve taken everything.” The words felt like they had torn themselves out of his vocalizer, raw and ragged. Hatchback reached for that anger, felt his frame straighten as he looked around at the mecha who followed him--then down at the canny scarlet optics of the waiting Decepticon.

“Ready to take it back?” the cybercat asked, his gaze intent.

Hatchback felt his blunted digits tighten over his little blaster. “Yes,” Hatchback growled, the sound picked up by the muted, angry rumble of engines behind him. “Show us where to go. We’ll do the rest.”

Their guide nodded and turned. “Follow me.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

“Ratbat: wishes his sigil to be uneven?”

The glideframe, cradled on his back amidst a nest of supporting cables, wriggled still more fiercely. “I don’t like it!” he squeaked, parrying away the brush with rapidly kicking back pedes.

Soundwave paused, helm tilted. “Ratbat.” He studied the little symbiont. This was the third time he’d applied the mark, and each time the glideframe had managed to rub away the nanites. Reapplying the topcoat took several breems of privacy, and they had precious few of those to spare as of late. “Sigil, not designed so Ratbat could like it.”

“Well, it should be!” Ratbat exclaimed, stubby pedes flailing in vigorous petrorabbit-kicks.

Soundwave leaned back, considering. The fragile, wispy strings of the symbiont’s thoughts were oddly difficult to read, even under normal conditions. Well, normal conditions for Ratbat, anyway. By far, the majority of the threads were as simple, clean and clear as those of any symbiont: the products of an uncomplicated mind in an uncomplicated frame. Tracing them was almost a meditative practice, a marvel of efficiencies layered over efficiencies -- even when Ratbat was in the grip of his fiercest and most unreasonable glideframe tempers, he was no less exquisite than any of Soundwave’s cohort.

But unlike the threads of any of the rest of Soundwave’s treasured symbionts, some of Ratbat’s seemed to trail away, to dip into a space that not even the technopathic module could follow. Sometimes the hazed lines reappeared, carrying haphazard code that Soundwave couldn’t always understand, or that puzzled him when he could. Sometimes they never returned, were lost to shadows instead, the threads terminated in the flux of probability.

Now, of course, every visible thread of the little glideframe’s higher processing was shaded a stubborn purple. Soundwave cupped a small pede in one palm, smoothing the delicate plates of his thumb-talon over the tense cables. “Query: why?” he asked at last.

Soundwave saw the answer before Ratbat vocalized, but neither the thought nor the glyphs made much sense. “It’s too roundy!”

Roundy. Soundwave allowed himself a quiet vent in the warm dimness of his quarters. “Ratbat, would prefer sigil of another division?” he ventured. Over the past few vorn the various parts of the Lord High Protector’s burgeoning army had adopted a number of slightly-different designs, all based loosely around Megatron’s profile. It wasn’t an ideal solution -- but Ratbat didn’t often venture very far from Soundwave, so as long as Ratbat wore *one* of the sigils….

“They’re all too roundy, Soundwave!” Ratbat protested fiercely, giving the brush another kick with his free pede, just in case it might harbor the thought of returning.

Soundwave shuttered his optics for just a moment behind his visor. He could say this for his existence: it was never, ever boring. “Ratbat: would perhaps consider variant on sigil?” So long as the color and general shape were right… he had authority enough to require a repaint for his own division. If he delivered the order with a commendation, it might even improve morale.

Ratbat cast him a crafty little look. “Maaaaybe….” he hedged, beady optics squinting suspiciously.

The database of every faction, divisional, and functional sigil known on Cybertron was fairly easy to assemble. Merging them with the various Decepticon marks was even easier -- Soundwave had yet to dump most of the image-splicing software he’d used at the Kaon Arena, and it proved useful now. He took the precaution of discarding any decals that might possibly be considered ‘roundy’, and presented the rest of the million or so options to Ratbat, all in a neatly compressed databurst. The entire process took about twelve nanoklicks.

“Hmm…” Ratbat murmured, flicking through the images, one at a time. Soundwave laid the brush aside and set to checking over each of Ratbat’s wings in turn, attending to each tiny chip and microfissure with careful multitools. One motivator link was showing a little wear near the left wingtip, and he logged it as a potentially troublesome spot. It might need replacing sometime within the next vorn….

“This one!” Ratbat squeaked, flashing the selected sigil back over comms. Soundwave opened the small file… and froze.

While pulling in every available source for his search, Soundwave had inadvertently included the highest level of Senatorial insignia among his database. The selected visage was avid, severe, with a stylized narrow mouthpoint and fierce angular optics. The crest, however… rose up in four sharp wedges, the central two taller than the outer. They looked somewhat like Soundwave’s upswept audial arrays -- a rarity among warframes. They also undeniably resembled the points of the Senatorial elite badges, worn by groups like the Ultracon strike force, the TransTech… and the Senators themselves.

Soundwave sat back. Would any other mech notice? If they did, would they think it mere hubris--or something more subversive? The last thing Soundwave needed right now was for the Decepticons to question his loyalties. “This sigil, problematic. Ratbat: would consider alternatives?” he asked.

“No! That one,” The symbiont exclaimed, peering around in case the brush reappeared and required further kicking.

So much for that. Soundwave considered the modified sigil, wondering what Ratbat had seen that made it so important. “This sigil, dangerous,” he pointed out, hoping against hope that Ratbat could give him a better reason to wear it.

“Well, yeah,” Ratbat replied, as if it were so obvious as to not even be worth saying. “That’s why we need to use it!”

Soundwave gave the little glideframe a level look. “Ratbat, will explain.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Ratbat said huffily. “It’s not roundy like all the others. It’s sharp and pointy and dangerous. And efficient. Isn’t that what Lord Megatron wants?” He curled small pede-claws around one of Soundwave’s stroking talons, clinging stubbornly.

Soundwave considered that. “Ratbat: has seen this sigil used.”

“Yep!”

“The sigil, soon adopted by others?”

“Yes! Or--no. Well, some of the others. Eventually.” Ratbat looked momentarily disconcerted, more of his threads drifting into unseen spaces, returning laden with gibberish. What on Cybertron was a ‘boombox’? The little glideframe reverted back to safer territory. “Anyway, the ones who matter will like it!”

“Query: Lord Megatron as well?”

“Well, yeah!” Ratbat eyed his carrier. Honestly, there were orns where he feared for Soundwave’s sanity. “Of course him too. Like he wouldn’t matter -- that’s just crazy.” Grumbling, he pulled and prodded Soundwave’s gently scritching talons to a new itchy place.

Soundwave sighed a warm ventilation, even as he smoothed the ruffled glideplates. “Ratbat, would accept smaller rendering of sigil?” Ratbat was a very small mech, after all. Perhaps he could keep Ratbat closer still -- the glideframe didn’t have the same urge to explore as did his larger symbionts. Not that it kept him from getting into trouble anyway, really.

The little glideframe twisted his helm to regard Soundwave sideways, audial cups swivelling this way and that. “Ok,” he allowed at last, small wing claws flailing to grab at Soundwave’s talon. “For now. Put it right -- no, right over -- no, no, right here!”

Picking up the brush, Soundwave complied, tracing vivid purple markings over tiny black chestplates. With careful precision, the sigil took shape, sharp-edged and menacing--the shape of their future.

 

 

******

 

The central habitation block had changed a great deal under Enforcer command. Formidex had borne witness to the passing of ages, his struts pressed into a thousand functions. This particular block was no more than a small portion of him, a far-flung remnant of some greater purpose. The city had expanded around him, highways like corded arteries radiating above, and Formidex’s duties--to guard and defend his citizens from outside enemies, to support those who lived within and around his frame--had expanded with it.

Formidex had been designed to care for the well-being of his inhabitants, but that caring was, of necessity, a diffuse, impersonal thing. Over twenty thousand mecha lived within Formidex alone, and at least ten times that number populated the network of outlying structures that had sprung up around the cityformer’s frame, connecting him to his brother cityformers and to the rest of the great city-state. Formidex knew the designation and function of all of his inhabitants, would respond to requests for information and assistance. Like any other mech, he mourned deaths, celebrated triumphs both small and large; but he would not--could not--choose sides.

It was a rule as old as cityformers themselves. A cityformer had a thousand optics, a hundred thousand audial inputs, could be in a thousand places at once, but they did not intervene in the squabbles and loves and trials of the mecha who lived within them. Formidex himself had lived for aeons, a silent witness to thousands of sparks as they passed on to the Well, and to thousands more at the instant of their creation. He loved them all, but his function was far larger than the life of any single mech, encompassing multitudes. Formidex had probably been unhappy -- had anyone asked -- to see any of his mecha go, but he would not set himself against the established order for them.

So now this complex belonged wholly to the Enforcers. The walls remained the same, rust-pitted and streaked by acid storms and the scouring grind of the wind-borne dust and fine metal filings. But great swaths of lower-level apartments were gone, replaced by storage bays when hundreds of marginal or functionless mecha had been unceremoniously evicted. The windows had closed, save for a few of the biggest that overlooked the courtyard, making the structure seem oddly monoscopic. Impossible to say how much the internal layout had changed as well -- without a cohort bond, Ravage had no safe way of contacting the jumpframes within. In an emergency, he could contact Phaseshift, of course. Hopefully that wouldn’t be necessary. The jumpframes might not particularly well-armed or armored--or even brave--but they were both clever and very quick. With any luck, they had already finished with their sabotage and withdrawn.

With a great deal more luck, everything these mecha needed should be in the storage bays, or nearby. The massive, treaded convoys that transported goods between cities had, with their constant comings and goings, carved deep runnels between the main entrance gates and the pleated sheets of the storage bay doors. Smaller transports for moving energon to other precincts had left their own marks, worrying the rough iron ground into peaks and troughs that caught at the pedes. From informants elsewhere in the city, however, Soundwave had learned something of the transports’ patterns, if not all of their contents. According to his master, at least one of these bays should presently be full. Now as he led his little grouping of mecha through the courtyard’s perimeter shadows, sensory spines pricked forward, Ravage could only hope that Soundwave was right.

Normally, such a route would have been impossible with so large a group, given the coverage of the security cameras. But Ravage detected only one still functioning, and poorly at that -- its passive sweeps an arrhythmic prickling against his sensors -- and he steered Hatchback’s crew well clear of the device. They reached the corrugated expanse of the first massive storage bay door -- the thick magnetic locks here were to have been disengaged.

They were not.

Ravage beckoned sharply with the barbed tip of his tail, then when none of the huddled mecha behind him responded, turned and padded back. He swept his crimson regard over Hatchback, the rest of the little group. “One of you,” he growled quietly, “come. Try your entry code.” Expecting Formidex to side with them, to threaten the safety of the rest of his citizens by aiding them, was a fool’s errand. But that did not mean they could not use Formidex’s own coding against his new inhabitants, the reflexive responses every cityformer had to a citizen’s requests.

The Enforcers had changed a great deal about this little corner of the cityformer -- they had made this block as impenetrable as Formidex himself. But overconfident mecha, in Ravage’s experience, tended to be much less thorough about the details… such as pruning all possible access branches from a cityformer’s massive code trees.

The mecha shifted uneasily, apprehension rippling from field to field. Then, squaring his frame, Hatchback stepped forward, trying to imitate Ravage’s stealthy tread and failing miserably. Crouched in the shadow of those massive walls, he reached out, touching the security panel and transmitting his residence-key.

For a sparkbeat, nothing happened. Then, just as Ravage was beginning to fear that the jumpframes might have been a little too zealous in their work, the locks disengaged, internal mechanisms unlocking with a series of audible thunks.

“It actually worked,” Hatchback whispered, optics spiralled wide in surprise as the massive door hissed smoothly open. Here, at least, the infrastructure had been well-maintained, which now worked to their advantage.

“Good. Let’s go--the sooner we’re inside, the sooner we will have what we came for.” Ravage said, low and urgent. “Go NOW.” The little group of mecha rushed for the open door, prompted by the bladeframe’s urgency and their own fears. Slipping through in ones and twos, they were all inside in a matter of moments.

Hatchback was the last; waiting until the others were in, and he briefly pressed one hand against the wall after the door had shut behind them. “Thank you, Formidex,” he murmured.

There was no reply. Not that any of them had been expecting one. But it didn’t matter -- for before all of them were supplies, stretching almost to the ceiling, stacked against the walls and on ranked rows of shelving. Energon--endless piles of it in marked crates--was stacked high, next to rows of replacement parts, tools, weapons, supplements … the bounty before them was almost too much to comprehend. There was far too much here for them to take it all, even if every single mech there stuffed his subspace full. Where did they even start?

“Spread out,” Ravage hissed, prowling between several awestruck mecha. This was a stroke of luck, to be sure, but their fortunes could change in a clock cycle. “Gather whatever supplies you can. Look for lightweight, compact things of high value, especially weaponry and ammunition.” The latter two would cost the Enforcers most, and prove useful once these mecha joined with more organized resistance units. They would almost certainly have to, once all this was over, given the infamy these mecha would acquire.

“Now hold on,” whispered a drab civilian, “I came here for my tools, not for…. Takin’ back what’s mine is one thing; thieving, now, that’s something different. We can’t just --”

“You can carry my stuff, if we find it,” muttered another, already checking the labels on the big storage cubes. “Give me more space for alla this -- Primus. More parts here n’ a dead-end pleasurebot chopshop.”

Despite these words of wisdom, several of the civilian mecha shifted uneasily, looking between the drab mech and the bounty around them. “I don’t think our stuff is here,” whispered another, scanning over the contents of an inventory datapad.

“Look, we all know the way back to the habitation wing -- let’s just go look for our things.”

“I’ll go with you, too.” Five or six of the group looked resolute.

Ravage regarded the mecha in dismay. The chances of a successful escape dropped considerably if the group separated, and he could feel his master’s concern. From the set of these mecha’s fields, he doubted he’d be able to sway them from their course -- but at least he could contain this madness, and keep the damage to a minimum. “Enough. I will accompany four of you to search for your belongings -- no more. The rest of you, remain here. Stay together, and take what you can, but do not leave this bay.” He received a quick, highly-encrypted ping from Soundwave. “We have exactly three breems. After that, the security systems begin to come back online, including the turrets and cameras. The time starts now.” Ravage lied, glad for the timely bit of chicanery.

A heightened nervousness spread, pinging back and forth from field to field. A couple of mecha put up a feeble protest. “Three breems -- you never said…” The rest, thank Primus, chose to waste no more time, hurrying to open cubes and subspace the contents. Ignoring the protests, Ravage watched four battered mecha sort themselves out with a minimum of whispered discussion. The warframe-turned-poet was one of them, he noted, a heavy-framed mech clad in an optic-searing combination of bright green and magenta. The other three were lightly framed civilian mecha of indeterminate frametype, with unremarkable color schemes. Mecha easily overlooked and underestimated, Ravage noted, which might serve them well in the future. Assuming, of course, they survived this.

“The habitation wing. Where is it?” he asked the nearest one, even as he headed for an interior door. Tripwire and his brothers had provided their carrier with a basic floor plan of the block from their earlier destructive explorations, but that only told him what the current, Enforcer-dictated configuration of rooms and hallways was, not what they once might have been.

Caught by surprise, a reddish civilian mech scrambled after him, amber optics wide and nervous. “Uh--well,” he began, then hesitated as Ravage keyed the door open. At least they didn’t have to contend with any locks from the inside. Head low, the bladeframe peered around the doorframe, sensory spines hackled forward, fanning wide to catch any trace of an Enforcer’s field. The hall was dark and empty, however, devoid of movement. The bladeframe slunk forward, pedes silent against the scarred flooring, and the four mecha hurried to follow him.

“Habitations were--um,” the mech continued, after a moment to orient himself, “This way, I think.”

“You *think*?”

The civilian mech cringed a bit under that unamused crimson stare. “Well, it might have changed, but … no. No, this looks familiar. It’s this way.”

Not for the first time, Ravage wished his cohort-siblings were there. Relying on guesswork and nervous civilian mecha was a recipe for disaster. But Soundwave’s reputation relied on this mission’s success; Ravage had never failed his master before, not when it counted, and he wasn’t about to start now. Jumpframes or no jumpframes.

“Very well. Follow me,” he growled, letting no hint of his misgivings show. “Keep your weapons ready and a sharp optic out for Enforcers. Right now we have the advantage of surprise--let’s keep it that way.”

 

 

******

 

A pointed purple helm poked out of an unremarkable hatch. “Through here, quick quick!”

Tripwire tumbled into the darkened room, darting to the huddled nest of his cohortmates, welcomed by muffled cheeps of relief. “All safe all safe--” little hands patted him all over, as he did his best to reciprocate. Twelve arms, twelve legs, twelve flicking audials… everyone in one piece. “Did you lose him?”

“Yup,” Tripwire confirmed happily. “I ran down the corridor and jumped up to the ceiling vent and then crawled up the next floor and ran across the main coolant piping to the next intersection. Then I jumped down and ran across the hallways and through five doors and up another level and he didn’t see me at all!” He snuggled into the cohort-ball, accepting his brothers’ congratulatory chirps, letting the knowledge of their success bring him down from the energized emotional spikes of his chase. “Ravage inside?”

“Yes--all the mecha too,” Truncation reported, his head poking up from the other side of their little huddle. “I saw them down in storage sublevels.”

“Good good.” Tripwire nodded. The last thing they wanted to do was disappoint another symbiont. Especially such a famous one! Ravage had even promised them all a memory if they were quick and careful. Their master had still been a bit worried about the danger they would be in, especially since he couldn’t come with. But all of them--well, except for Proxy, who thought the whole adventure would be great fun, memory or not--wanted a Ravage-memory too much to say no. Who knew when such an opportunity might come again?

"Are we all finished?" Inquired a decidedly squeaky voice from somewhere under the pile.

"I spliced all the wires that said 'security' to all the ones that said 'waste disposal' on level three, just like he said!”

“Ooh, ooh me too, nodes six to thirteen and --” little voices babbled over one another as they all told of their adventures.

“Ok, that sounds good.” Tripwire poked his pointed helm out, glancing around. Darkened consoles loomed above their little huddle, and there was fine metal dust gathered in the corners. The lights were off. It didn’t look like this room had seen use for some time. “We should definitely go. But, uhm. Where are we?” The plans said that this should be a public shower rack, which it was clearly not, but Formidex had changed everything around in all kinds of weird ways. Why so much complex, expensive equipment in a disused space, though?

Where, indeed? “Let’s find out!” chirruped Outbound, wriggling to extract himself from the pile.

“Wait wait, guys--” Tripwire started, too late, as their tight huddle fell apart, little mecha scattering in all directions, across the dusty flooring and straight up the walls and consoles.

“Ooh, look look!” Proxy was a flurry of bright yellows as he peered at one rack of controls after another. His tail flicked madly, then vanished with a screech as he pried up a loose panel and dived inside. Truncation hopped up where the yellow jumpframe had been just a moment before. “Lookit this thing right here --”

“Hey, don’t you think we should--” Tripwire skittered to the half-open doorway and peered nervously down the hall, audials swiveling this way and that. “Shh, quiet, you guys, I’m trying to listen.” Was that… far in the distance, echoing strangely from all the walls and corridors, he thought he could hear….

Truncation scritched his little helm with a hindpede, all six optics regarding the console he was sitting on thoughtfully. “Do you suppose this used to be an old command center? Why’d Formidex keep it, instead of recycling the space and equipment?”

“Dunno,” Proxy answered, his voice muffled by the walls of the console as he wiggled his way around inside. “But everything’s all here. Crossover linkages, inputs, outputs, even the quantum drives. Wonder what’s in ‘em? Ooo--I could hook this back up and we could see!”

“Yes, yes, wanna see,” chirruped Codebreak, bouncing over his own console, pressing controls and investigating data slots. The youngest of their cohort, Codebreak might have more enthusiasm than common sense, but his affinity for puzzles and encryptions was second to none. He leaped to the top of his console, wiggling down into the narrow gap between it and the next to find the service hatch. “Find the transformer, trace the cables, yup. Power outlets hot, yes yes yes! Hook this, and this, and warm the pre-amp arrays, and connect red to green and green to blue--no, no green to green and now …!”

“Sssh!” Bitskip spat a burst of static at his cohort-brethren, admonishing them. _//Remember what Ravage said. Quick and quiet!//_ He scampered over to where Tripwire was, training his own sensory arrays to the limit. Bitskip was Phaseshift’s First, and with that great honor came great responsibility, which was all right because he was the responsible one. Phaseshift had told Bitskip to keep the cohort safe, and that was what he was going to do, no matter how interesting the others might find this mystery.

 _//I heard something, but ….//_ Tripwire said, every bit of his frame tense as he scanned for danger.

With an arrhythmic sputter, a console behind him whirred to life. Codebreak spliced a last few lines back into place -- heedless of the snap of live charge or the groan of old equipment handling a load for the first time in at least a vorn. Codebreak let out a muffled whoop of victory.

“Ssshst!”

“Sorry sorry!” Codebreak climbed out of the console, talons scrabbling against the metal sides. He leaped over to Proxy’s console. _//Mine’s ready--it just needs authentication from yours. See? Connect that with that, and that, see? And then start this sequence, and then--//_

“I know I know,” More scrabbling from inside, and then Proxy re-emerged, bright-opticked and covered in metaldust. “Ready now!”

Codebreak eagerly scampered over to the input terminals, clicking into the startup sequences. “So secret so hidden and safe, what are you hiding, Formidex?” He chittered quietly in satisfaction as the console came to life underneath him with the electric-snap of ozone and heated metal. And with a sharp series of clicks, a drive slotted open, a cradle extending, revealing a glimmering data-crystal.

“Woah.” Truncation bounded around to get a better look at the cradle. “Who even keeps these things anymore?”

Codebreak shivered all over with want, little talons reaching out to trace the glimmering angles. It looked a little like a typical garden crystal, but clear and very brilliant, with fine lines of ghostly blue tracks throughout. “What is it?”

Proxy joined his youngest frame-brother, admiring the way the crystal made his reflection look big from one side, then all twisted up and weird from another side. “Data, stored in the arrangement of atoms in the matrix. Can’t be corrupted, see. But too fragile, easy to fragment.”

“Ssshst!” Bitskip could hear the sound that had alerted Tripwire now, too, a kind of patter, or scrabbling, something lighter and much quieter than the tread of a full-size mech. He twisted around, counting up flicking tails. One-two-three-four-five-and-himself, all here, so who was making that sound?

 _//Sorry, sorry!//_ Codebreak wrapped his spindly arms around the crystal, which popped free of its little cradle. He hugged it to his narrow chest. _//It’s so pretty!//_

Bitskip flounced over to chide the cohort’s youngest. _//It’s old, too, Codebreak! Who knows what Formidex has been storing on there, maybe viruses, been ages since the city commander last used this post and probably didn’t think to prune it even then--//_

 _//So sparkly!//_ Codebreak rubbed his helm on the glittering angles. _//We could take it to -- wait. What’s that sound?//_

All six little jumpframes froze, still and silent, listening over the desultory whirr and click of the old command center. Was that scrabbling coming from outside? A heavy thrum like panting ventilations? _//I’ve heard that before,//_ Outbound started slowly, tail fluffing slowly, making him look larger. _//It’s--//_

An undulating howl cut through the still air, a rising sound like the upsweep of a blade, shuddering like needles along neural nets. The sound unfolded, multiplied, was joined in chorus, a murder of terrible wailing cries.

Codebreak’s tail was fluffed now, too, as he convulsively clutched his crystal. _//What--//_

 _//Run!//_ Bitskip’s spark felt like the smallest grain of uranium in his trembling chassis. _//We run now!//_


	6. Chapter 6

Despite Ravage’s skepticism, the small civilian mech--Runaround--had been telling the truth. Their former home had changed a great deal under the influence of the Enforcers, but the basic layout remained the same. The powers that be had obviously decided there was little reason to waste energon in a complete transformation of the habitation block, and had instead opted for a simple--if extensive--retrofit instead. Runaround led the little group as they scuttled down corridors, peering around corners and jumping at every sound, until finally they reached a familiar set of hatchways.

“Here,” Runaround whispered. “These were the central units. The Enforcers--we locked away everything valuable we couldn’t carry, once they--” his vocalizer glitched, and he ducked his helm, frame shifting as if to make himself smaller.

“We didn’t have the time then ta take everything. Not once the Enforcers locked us out.” Beatverse said evenly. He stepped forward, settling a heavy hand on the much smaller mech, glancing down at the silent cybercat. “Time ta make things right.”

“Very well.” The cybercat flowed forward, taloned pedes eerily silent against the decking. The hatchway in front of him opened, the interior filled with dusty crates and bits of equipment. The room was still recognizable as a seating area onto which many apartments had once opened. It was being used as storage for low-value items and other supplies, now. “Spread out, and work quickly. We must find your caches and rejoin the others. If we are caught--” The Decepticon spy trailed off, letting the listening mecha spin their own suppositions, each more terrible than the last. Runaround and the others quickly nodded, scattering to the different rooms, pushing past broken equipment and stored supplies in search of their tools.

Beatverse snorted quietly. “You do know how ta motivate a mech.” Then he went to help one of the others, who was struggling with a locked hatchway. The Enforcers had apparently changed the codes--good thing Beatverse knew a thing or two about locks. “Lemme help you with that,” he rumbled.

Wirecutter glanced over at him, all four optics wide--then scuttled backwards as the big warframe-turned-poet sank blunted talons into the mechanism. Metal groaned and tore, screeching loudly in the quiet, and the smaller mecha winced, hunching at the sound. With a grunt of satisfaction, Beatverse forced the hatchway open. Flimsy civilian construction -- he’d barely even needed to exert himself. “Have at,” he told Wirecutter, and ambled on to the next doorway in need of his particular brand of persuasion.

Wirecutter glanced around, hoping they hadn’t upset their guide -- for a cybercat, the Decepticon had fragging long fangs -- but the big black technimal was gone, without even the glow of optics or frame heat in the shadows to hint at where it might be. A shiver traced electric-hot down Wirecutter’s backstruts. They might have gotten this far, but despite the cybercat’s assurances, would they really be able to get out, even with the Decepticon’s help?

His chronometer pinged -- only twelve kliks left. Hurriedly, Wirecutter ducked through the ruined doorway. Amazingly, everything inside was just as they had left it, as if this storage unit had been sequestered away from the flow of time. Wirecutter’s metalshaping tools were here. And Detente’s paints, and Thoroughput’s crystallography seeds, and -- Wirecutter eagerly shoved his way further in, passing his talons in wonder over the all the things he’d never thought he’d see again.

Even with their tools, he knew that earning energon -- earning a place -- would be hard. Not many mecha with basic allotments had much to spare for luxuries like crystals or new bodypaint, and those with higher allotments could get all these things, and far more, from the proper channels. But that wasn’t really the point. These tools… they were the symbols of their functions. They were hope, the promise of a place, a future -- a promise that once things got better, their functions would have value again. That all this would pass.

Cutting off his vocalizer, refusing to give voice to his grief and fear, Wirecutter began subspacing his own things, and then as much of the rest as he could take.

The rest of the little group of mecha were finding their belongings as well, their tiny murmurs of victory, of delight and discovery, barely audible over the rattle of opened doors and the scrape of shifting crates as their contents were pillaged. Beatverse, the big warframe-turned-poet, finished first. He hadn’t had to leave much behind, really; most of his work was still safely stored within his memory cores. Still, there had been a few remnants of his original framing that he’d been forced to cache--remnants that as little as he might like it, were looking more and more like they’d be slaggin’ useful.

He glanced around. “Where’s the turbopuss?” he hissed to Runaround.

The small civilian shrugged, busily sorting through drawers and tucking away what he could. “I think he went to scout.” He waved a hand vaguely over one shoulder. “Through there, maybe.”

Arms loaded, subspace stuffed to capacity, Beatverse went to look… and froze as the hatch hissed open for him. This had been a community center once, not so long ago: a creche for budded sparklings, a big, long room for games and data surfing and sometimes even a little gambado, with modular chairs and tables for leisurely chats or games of feint. A sweeping expanse of clearplated windows looked out over the courtyard. For nearly a quarter-vorn, Beatverse had spent most of his time here while recovering from his partial reformat. Going from a heavyweight warframe to a poet meant more than just extra processors, though learning to control those had been hard enough. It also meant sharpened senses, rampant emotional protocols, mods for dance and movement in a frame originally meant for long stretches of stoic inactivity.

The refit had been a difficult one. It had also been everything he’d hoped for, dreamed of, well-worth the megavorn of saving.

This community center had been his haven while he’d learned to adapt, to control his new abilities. Now--it was an Enforcer break room. Senate propaganda papered every wall, big holographic sheets of it. Beatverse’s faceplates folded down, his expression hardening as he surveyed the messages as they flickered in their automatic loops: condemnations of the terrible waste committed by the lower classes, their selfishness in choosing to reproduce, their greedy addictions, their inability to work at a proper function unless led along by their betters.

Beatverse stood, and saw these things, and remembered… remembered the hatchlings who tottered, squealing, over his pedes, while the ruddy glow of a distant and weary sun warmed the big chamber. He’d been welcomed here; he’d been someone more than just his batch number and unit. He’d made friends here -- a family of choice.

“Hey, Wirecutter,” he said quietly, frame slowly straightening. “Do you still have those barrels of magnesium shavings?”

**********

 

“Run away, run away!” Squealing, the jumpframes skittered down the hallways, leaping over obstacles and running up walls. They poured around a corner and through hatchways, a rainbow swirl of tails and optics and frantic scrabbling claws.

“Runrunrun!” Bitskip chanted, his spark clenching in fear, audials swivelled backwards. None of them dared stop, dared take the time for a proper scan, but it didn’t matter. Those metallic hunting howls, ragged and discordant, the flares of _hunt/kill/bite_ that saturated the air and flushed out the prey ahead, were all the warning they needed. _Cyberhounds_. The Enforcers must have kept a pack of these things in stasis, reprogrammed and refitted technimals to be used on tasks not worth a more sophisticated mecha’s time.

Tasks like flushing out an infestation of jumpframes. And cyberhounds didn’t care how clever or valuable a jumpframe was. All they knew was the hunt ... and the kill.

Meeping in terror, Truncation skidded around a corner, talons scrabbling for purchase. He leaped for the shelter of exposed rafters overhead, just as a flurry of micromissiles exploded bare microns from his tail, filling the hallways with smoke and slagged metal. The first cyberhound charged through the haze, the smoke no barrier to its sensory arrays, razored dentae bared, talons carving deep grooves into the floorplates.

A third the size of a standard mech, cyberhounds were far larger and stronger than any of the jumpframes. They were also faster than any Enforcer could be, especially in confined spaces. Snarling, the cyberhound lunged at Codebreak, who had been knocked tumbling by the blast. The bright orange and red jumpframe scrabbled backwards, trying to get his limbs underneath him.

_//Here jump here to me now NOW!//_

Codebreak leaped as Tripwire swung down, one long arm outflung. Thin digits reached out, grasping, and clawed hands locked together, Tripwire pulling his cohort-brother upwards with a great heave--

\--and the cyberhound’s fangs snapped shut on empty air. Codebreak chittered, tucking up his feet, tumbling as he soared through the air. With a lithe twist, that long, extravagantly spiked tail flicked outwards, every spine standing straight on end. And not all of those spines were sensors. Electrified needles shot from the fluffy appendage, sizzling through the air--straight into the cyberhound’s faceplates.

The technimal fell backwards, convulsing, snapping blindly as current ripped through its frame. Dancing on a ceiling strut, Codebreak cackled in victory, his datacrystal held overhelm. His skinny limbs went every which way as he threw his hip gimbals into a little shimmy of triumph.

“Yes yes gotcha ha!”

Tripwire nearly bowled him over. “No time run run!” Tripwire gasped, and they both leaped, outflung claws reaching for the next perch, and the next, as more cyberhounds charged around the corner, weaponry already homing in on the fleeing frames of their quarry.

Teeth like an alloygator's sheared through the ceiling strut behind Codebreak, buckling metal squealing as the beast dragged it down. The flexible strut bowed with the hound’s weight as it clawed its way up into the rafters. More of the creatures snapped and leaped for the scattering symbionts, so close they could feel the heated air of the beasts’ ventilations.

“Eeeieee!” Clutching his crystal, Codebreak scampered desperately to the end of the twisting rafter -- and then the first hound let go of the length of metal, dropping heavily back to the floor. “Ohscraaaaa--” the shockwave as the rafter sprang back into place flung the tiny symbiont into the air, sailing tail over faceplates.

Scrabbling, Codebreak bounced off a wall, hit another rafter hard… and dropped his datacrystal. “Nooooo!” The orange and red symbiont clawed for purchase with slender fingers, spindly hindlimbs flailing. One grasping little pede closed around the sparkly bauble, snatching it out of the air.

Thin green claws closed around Codebreak’s wrists. “Getup gotta go--” Tripwire gasped… and then massive jaws clamped down on the tip of Codebreak’s fluffy, dangling tail.

One terrible, heaving wrench, and the cyberhound ripped both little mecha off the rafter. Half-mad with terror, Codebreak fired every one of his charge needles in that same instant, filling the beast’s jaws with crackling bolts of electricity. Howling, the technimal flung them both down the hallway with a snap of its heavy helm.

“Aiiieeee!” Twin squeals of terror echoed down the corridor as Tripwire and Codebreak bounced over one another and off a wall, a flailing knot of spindly limbs and fluffy tails until the two symbionts fetched up against a dead end. The datacrystal clacked twice as it bounced on the tiles, and then spun to a stop … right in front of Codebreak’s faceplates.

The whole world was spinning and Codebreak couldn’t really feel his tail and his leg was stuck under Tripwire’s arm but when he reached out to hug his little crystal close, everything was all right again. His sparkly. He had it now, and it was his again, ha, ha! Until... until he focused past the glittering angles, and down the length of the corridor.

Snarling, three enormous hounds advanced down the hall, fangs the length of a jumpframe’s whole arm agape. Two more slunk behind, electricity still discharging across their crude-cast helms. The creatures were enormous, each more than the mass of all of the symbionts put together, their cold optics glowing a hungry, feral green. Their black iron armor was as thick as Codebreak’s waist, and mounted weapons stood up from bladed shoulders. Long, serrated talons dug into the steel flooring.

“Oh no,” Codebreak whimpered, his datacrystal clutched convulsively to his skinny chest as he tried to burrow under his elder cohort-sibling’s slender frame. His efforts mainly ended up tangling them both together, making it impossible to run, even if there had been some place for them to go. But there wasn’t. Behind was nothing but blank wall, and they’d never be able to leap in time to the rafters above, where their brothers scrambled for shelter and squealed in dismay. “Oh no no no ....”

Tripwire stuffed his fist into his buccal unit to keep from cheeping in terror.

One of the hounds hissed, a sound like the snapping fires of a slagpit. The lead beast dragged its talons across the floorplates with a high metal shriek, sharpening the terrible weapons, primitive optics fixed upon the easy prey before him. Then the hounds charged.

But instead of terrified and defenseless jumpframes, their lunge was met by darkness, by a living wave of razored blades. Stygian darkness vaulted the rearmost hounds like a living streak of void lightning, clearing the beasts with contemptuous ease. It fell upon the first, talons splayed and fangs agape, silent in its fury.

The hallway erupted in chaos.

Hounds howled, teeth slamming shut on empty air - or on their own packmates. The lead technimals tried to turn in midcharge, to face this new attacker, even as the rearmost animals skidded helplessly into them with the sickening crack of tons of armor colliding at speed. Smoke and gouts of flame erupted as microburst missiles impacted the walls, the blasts reverberating in the confined space.

The hallway turned into a firestorm of blade-flashing havoc, of screams and roars and terrible howling wails. The two jumpframes huddled small on the floor, spindly arms clasped over their helms as shrapnel and bullets impacted around them. They had no cover, nowhere to hide, and nothing could survive this unscathed-

Thin fingers closed on Tripwire's shoulder. "Quick quick!" Outbound dangled from the rafters, his pedes in Proxy's grip, who himself was anchored by their other two cohort-brothers. A multitude of panicked optics peered down through the smoke and embers.

Meeping in relief, Tripwire and Codebreak swarmed up the chain of jumpframes, datacrystal clutched safely in one fist. Just in time, too, as an injured cyberhound slammed into the dead end, leaving a technimal-shaped dent two hands deep in the metal slab. A shockwave of heat and pressure flattened the jumpframes to the rafters as something detonated below -- something big.

"Ravage!" Tripwire cried, all his little optics searching the fuming smoke below, trying to find the ancient bladeframe in the flash and flurry of dark plating and huge jaws.

"Runrun!" cried Bitskip, shoving them all towards an open vent glimpsed in a break in the billowing haze, ducking away from a sheeting shower of sparks.

"But - but Ravage!"

“Ravage is strong and wise and quick! Remember master’s orders! RunbesafeRUN!” Phaseshift’s _worry/concern_ was a drumbeat through the bond, their carrier’s fear for them reinforcing the words. Reminded of their duty, his cohort-brothers disappeared into the vent in flashes of color, until only Bitskip was left. He hesitated for a nanoklik, craning his neck in an attempt to spot the big bladeframe below.

Then, with a chitter of dismay, he dived into the vent, leaving Ravage behind.

 

**********

 

Down below, silver jaws parted in vicious satisfaction as the last of the jumpframes’ fields disappeared. In the next moment, the dark frame slipped beneath the underchassis of a hound, delivering a brutal kick to the gap between armor plates as he slid across the flooring, fleeting as a shadow.

Cyberhounds were huge, massively armored, bristling with weapons. Each one outweighed Ravage by more than half. They had reach, mass, weaponry, and numbers on their side ... and it was only a matter of time before Ravage took them all apart.

His ambush had been carefully calculated, designed to confuse and demoralize the cyberhounds’ primitive processors, but he had been hampered by the close proximity of the jumpframes, unable to unleash his full armament while they remained in the line of fire. Now that they were gone, Ravage could fight as he pleased. Which meant that this particular pack of cyberhounds was about to learn that they were no match for a bladeframe.

With a savage crush and twist of his jaws, Ravage tore the cyberhound’s leg off of its frame in a shower of sparks. The technimal howled, a metallic sound of rage and pain, twisting away. Another hound dove in, jaws agape, trying to fasten serrated teeth on the bladeframe’s unprotected back--only to be knocked reeling as Ravage’s tail, heavy blades flowered open, whiplashed a stunning blow across that heavy helm. Sparks flew as the razored blades gouged deep, and Ravage turned like liquid fury, following up with another rake across the hound’s faceplates that cracked every one of the thing's optics. The hound roared, fired blindly - and Ravage was gone like a shadow, leaping free of the tangle. A powerful rebound off of a nearby bit of piping, and he was in the fray once more.

Cyberhounds, even Enforcer-coded ones, were simple creatures, predictable in their programming. The Kaon Arena had taught Ravage well what to expect. His attacks were always from unexpected angles, adapting to their tactics, allowing no blows to land. He couldn’t risk allowing the cyberhounds to pull him down--he might be stronger and faster, but they had every other advantage. Instead Ravage used speed and skill to stay ahead of his enemies, to tangle them into each other, using newly-fitted weaponry to target sensory panels, cut vital lines and struts.

A second hound fell, collapsed in a smoking heap of dented armor. A magnetic mine, stolen from one of the hounds' own carry-mounts and planted between this one's breastplates, triggered as it hit the ground. Cyanogen flowers bloomed at forty-six hundred degrees, burning their way to the core of the helpless beast in a gout of flame.

The mine proved too much for the three remaining technimals. They retreated uncertainly, stumbling over severed bits of their own packmates, regrouping at the end of the hall, yipping. This prey had turned into something very different than the jumpframes they had been ordered to hunt. Smoke shrouded, this symbiont was a horror, all splayed claws and gaping sparkeater's fangs, tail lashing a bladed flail, razored armor unmarred. The sagging, half-slagged walls reflected all the dancing colors of the slagpit, but Ravage was black as the void.

The cyberhounds hesitated. For the first time, Ravage raised his voice. Not in a technimal’s howl... but in a low, growling subsonic roar that rose, reverberating against the walls, gaining power and a terrible kind of momentum. The hounds craved the cries of their prey, but this... this was a full-fledged, primal scream of challenge.

Programming fought with deeply-coded instinct. Instinct won. The surviving hounds turned--

\--and ran for their lives.

 

**********

 

Beatverse rested his fingertips against the long back wall of the Enforcer break room. He'd set the timer - it was beyond foolish to linger. Still, it seemed rude not to say something. "Sorry about this, Formidex," he told the room quietly. "But if you can leave off puttin’ it out for a bit, I'd... well, we'd all appreciate it."

The big, curving room echoed only silence, offset only by the nearly-subaudible sizzle of fuses. Had the cityformer heard? Had the Decepticon sabotage team - whomever they were - cut off Formidex's ability to communicate, or even to see what was going on within his massive frame?

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. It was long past time to go.

Bobbing his helm once in respect, Beatverse hurried back to the habitation quarters. Four kliks left. "The cat's not back yet?" he whispered to the huddle of confused civilian mecha. They all had finished subspacing as much as they could hold, and now hovered uncertainly around the room’s main entrance, scanning the corridor for their elusive guide.

"N-no. What do we do now? Do we try to rejoin the others on our own?" Runaround whispered, his field reeking of anxiety.

3.7 kliks. They couldn’t afford to wait any longer. “No choice. We gotta move.” Wherever the cybercat had wandered off to wasn’t their problem. They needed to rejoin the others and get the slag out of there. Beatverse reflexively tested his joints, adjusting to the new weight on his frame, to combat protocols executing again after long disuse as they registered familiar old hardware. Beatverse hadn’t discarded everything from his past function, his past life. He would have given anything to let these weapons rust into dust, but that wasn’t exactly an option for him anymore, was it? “I’ll take point.”

They moved out. The civilian mecha didn’t fall into order so much as huddle behind him, checking nervously around each corner before they rounded it, their ceaseless scans prickling against his own. The halls were eerily silent, the only sound the scuff of their pedes against the steel flooring, the creak and shift of struts and armor. Beatverse found himself falling into old rhythms, instincts impressed on his very spark from the moment he’d first onlined to a frame that didn’t quite feel like it should be his. The tactical calculations… some corner of his processors still craved this familiar tang of impending violence, the familiar hum of battle datasets warming his circuits.

But there were other things in his spark now, as well. Glyphs as well as tactics, art as well as warfare. _Slag and cinders._ He subvocalized the glyphs, setting them to the beat of his pedes, his higher processors turning over the interlocking meanings, feeling them take shape. _Home lost/home changed._ Another six beats, six steps. _Flowering rust and decay, remnants/beauty scattered within a devouring wind._ Halfway there, and no sign of the cybercat or the enforcers. His deep-buried tactical hardware reflexively calculated the odds that they had been abandoned, the potential avenues for attack and retreat. _Sparkfire gyres from Primus/heart-_

A skittering sound broke the hush. Beatverse froze, Runabout and the others stumbling over his heels. Wirecutter clutched at his makeshift weapon, raising the plasma torch unsteadily. “Is it--?”

More scuffling sounds, rapidly growing louder. But they didn’t sound like enforcers, more like like--glitchmice? Tiny claws on metal? Beatverse tilted his helm at the skitter, now accompanied by thumps and half-vocalized indignant squeaks.

“-go go. Hurry hurry! Don’t stop your tail is right in my faceplates why are you--” Another thump, an indignant squawk--and a jointed vent tube along the ceiling fell open, exposing… a skinny yellow aft?

Another long-limbed … *thing* … all bright optics and bristling tail, came tumbling half out of the darkened opening, skinny, multi-jointed legs clawing at the tube. This one was blue, and Beatverse couldn’t see how any part of it attached to the yellow… thing. “Awk!”

“What the--” Whatever the creature or creatures were, they were tiny, much smaller than the cybercat. And it -- they -- didn’t appear to be much of a threat as limbs flailed awkwardly and distressed chittering noises issued from the venting shaft.

An orange face, upside-down, popped out of the tangle of arms and legs. “Hey hey you guys quit kicking you gotta move this over here and then -- oh, hi! You’re late. You’re supposed to be down in the bays with the others.” Tiny amber optics blinked all in sequence as the little mech focused on the astonished mecha. An arm waved at them from the flailing knot of spindly frame parts.

“What the frag is that?!” whispered one of the gaping civilian mecha.

“And how does it know--”

Beatverse squared his shoulders. “Are you the rest of the Decepticon team?”

“Yes! No! Yes!” A purple face wedged and shoved its way next to the orange one. “We’re the *responsible* part of the team,” it said, as conflicting answers peeped from the length of the tube. Beatverse didn’t know of any mech small enough to fit into such a tiny space -- not even maintenance bots were that elongated. And yet this definitely wasn’t an Enforcer drone. Or drones. Because who in their right processors would think to make a drone like this? Or this glitched?

“Where’s the cat?” demanded one of the civilian mecha, bewildered.

The tube went silent. Something inside gave a hiccuping sob. “He’s dead extinguished and its all my fault -- no it isn’t don’t say that! -- he saved us -- gonna be fine we just have to -- all gonna die -- gotta go right now now--” Claws skittered inside the vent. An aging rivet broke loose from a rusting ceiling belt. The bent section of vent began to dip even more as weight shifted inside it. “He is gone torn apart he’s extinguished -- no he’s not he’s fine and we’re gonna be fine -- you guys you guys you gotta move to another part of the--”

With a squeal that made Beatverse wince, the much-abused conduit failed. A whole section fell away from the rest, crashing to the floorplates. “Eeee!” Half a dozen brilliantly-colored little frames came tumbling out of the segment -- more than it seemed should have been able to fit in the tight space. One of them didn’t scatter far; its tailtip was caught under the small section of conduit. “Halp, I’m squished!”

Primus. Beatverse briefly shuttered his optics while all the mecha behind him gaped. Core coding remnants whispered through his processors: the mission was a clusterfrag, best way out was to leave behind any stragglers and cut straight through, get back to his own lines.

But Beatverse didn’t have lines now, didn’t have fortifications or support. Just these: the sparks entrusted to him, a fragging Shrodinger's cybercat, and a tiny team of bumbling saboteurs. “Quiet, all of you,” he growled, striding forward to lift the conduit segment away from the trapped one. “We’re going to get back to the others, and then we’re getting out, same way we came in. Form up -- move it!”

The newly-freed bitty mech cocked its little yellow-and-teal head, peering at him sideways, tail flicking rapidly. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. Come on, this way. It’s faster!” The five--or was it six? slag, they moved fast--mini-mecha disentangled themselves, skittering in all directions, down the corridor and bouncing up the walls. The blue one bounced its way off a nearby length of piping and landed on Beatverse’s pauldron in a flicker of pure speed, bright yellow optics peering up from neon faceplates.

“Hihi. Need to be faster, quick quick!” It jittered a bit. “Can’t stay here. Need to get out!”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t need a glitchmouse to tell me that,” Beatverse grumbled. But his pedes were already moving, following the little herd of tiny technimal-things.

“‘m not a glitchmouse,” the thing said indignantly. “I’m Outbound!”

“Shhh!” hissed one of tne of the other ones as it skittered by, and the blue one--Outbound--shrank down, abashed.

“Oops.” He looked down from his perch at the faintly disbelieving faceplates of the civilian mecha. “Gotta be quiet,” he confided in hushed tones. “Quick and quiet, just like Master said. Ravage too.”

“Hunh.” They never stopped moving, their little unit progressing quickly down the twisting halls now that they had the technimals scouting ahead.  One of the them had some sort of data hardware clutched to its tiny chest.  “Your ‘master’--he’s a Decepticon then? Some kinda spymaster?” Beatverse asked, keeping his vocalizer low.

“Phaseshift? Phaseshift isn’t a Decepticon. Not yet--maybe later? Or maybe never? I dunno. He’s very important, though. He knows things,” Outbound said seriously. “Maybe not as much as Ravage’s master, though. And nobody knows as much as Ravage!”

“Ravage. That’s the cybercat?” Beatverse asked. That little helm nodded. “Never heard of ‘im before.”

Outbound gave the big warframe a pitying look. “It’s okay. Not everyone can remember everything. That’s why Phaseshift has us.” The technimal bounced a little. “We help. We find things, lost things, and we remember.”

Lost things, huh? Hurrying at the head of their their little motley band of mecha, Beatverse had to admit that they probably qualified.

There was an excited chitter from up ahead. “Here here!” All the little technimals paused for an astrosecond, sensory spines lifting, searching for enemies, then swarmed forward, into the docking bay. Beatverse felt his spark skip a spin; just two klicks left, enough time to hurry everyone out, no time to waste but they would make it, they’d...

There was a surprised exclamation from inside- “What the frag--?” -and Beatverse kicked it into a higher gear, hurrying forward before one of his neighbors overreacted and tried to take a potshot at the weird, hopping little things.

“We’re here, we’re back. Don’t shoot, they’re with us--whoa.” Beatverse stopped short, surveying the pile of stacked crates, surrounded by embarrassed and seriously overladen civilian mecha. “What the frag--the cat said ta take what we needed, not to empty the entire fraggin’ storehouse!” He could feel the astroseconds ticking down.

“I know, I know,” Hatchback said, running blunted digits nervously over the nearest crate. “But there was just so much the others could use. They even had cybertronium supplements in storage--enough to cover all the sparklings’ upgrades for at least a vorn. Plus medical supplies, energon, parts for the mechlings who’re coming into full frames. I know the Decepticon told us to take weapons and ammunition, but … how could we just leave all this behind, when the others need it so badly?” Hatchback’s field was hazed with staticky distress as he faced Beatverse.

Behind Hatchback, fully half of the civilian mecha were in their altmodes, mainly light courier and hovercars. Their hatches and truckbeds were stuffed to bursting, other mecha tottering as they continued to lash still more supplies into place. And even at that, more crates remained. Mecha moved awkwardly, their subspaces full beyond capacity. Every one of them would stand out in a crowd, none would be able to move fast.

One of the tiny saboteurs scritched its bright orange audials with a crimson hindpede. “You guys are gonna need a bigger truck,” it said.

Beatverse shook his helm in disbelief, denial. Some of those altmodes wouldn’t even be able to fit through the narrow gate through which they’d all entered the Enforcer compound. “We have to leave this. All of this. I could only find a five-klick timer and it was old, I don’t know if-- Everyone, dump at least half your subspace, we’ve got to…”

“What do you mean, ‘a timer?’” Hatchback frowned.

The entire cargo bay *heaved*. The shockwave rattled tools off high shelves, knocked one unsteady mech off his pedes. The bay doors had been left ajar and now hot slagpit light washed in, impossibly bright, casting stark black shadows.

Arrhythmic, stuttering at first, an enforcer alarm went off, rising to a klaxon wail over the rattle of falling glass.


	7. Chapter 7

Widecast snarled, kicking at a crumpled bit of scorched armor. It’d seemed like the obvious solution at the time: the pack of cyberhounds the station kept in stasis had been easy to activate, and setting them to hunting down those slagging rodent-things hadn’t taken any time at all. It should have been an easy hunt; those vermin might be quick, but they obviously weren’t particularly smart or well-armed. The cyberhounds should have rooted them out within a breem or two.

Instead, he had ended up with a whole new slagging mess to deal with. At least two of the hounds had been torn apart, their frames simply shredded past any possibility of repair. The walls and flooring of one entire corridor had been scorched and cratered by the fight. Worse, in all this slag and twisted debris, there wasn’t a single trace of the vermin, deactivated or otherwise, to be found! And now the rest of the pack had scattered, pinging back his irritable queries with dumb responses of _fear/obedience/confusion_ and scattered, indistinct pictures of … something. Not a mech, but something else -- something big and black and fast, something willing and able to get into a scrap with a pack of cyberhounds and come out of it alive.

“Fragging shimbeaters. Shoulda known better to send a drone to do a mech’s work,” Widecast grumbled, surveying the damage. When his superiors got back, his aft was so, so slagged. The only way he was going to make it out of this mess with his rank intact is if he caught the things that had caused it. Worse, he had the sinking feeling that he was dealing with more than just a sudden infestation of vermin.

One of the hounds sent up a broadcast call, wide-banded to the pack and Enforcers alike: a blurred sensory impression of _/sharp/_ and _/danger/_ and _/hunt!/_. The dark creature that had torn into them earlier was now on the run, heading for the perimeter gates. The cyberhounds’ fear and confusion faded, directives snapping back into focus now that they had more familiar prey. The pack wouldn’t be caught by surprise this time -- Widecast could feel their determination. They would run the thing down and tear it apart.

But this time -- *this* time -- Widecast would make sure they did the job right. _//Go! Hunt-and-disable!//_ he commanded the pack. Enforcer commands had been deeply encoded into their core programming: they would obey. And Widecast would be right behind them. He turned, transforming as soon as the corridor widened enough for his alt. Time to put an end to this game!

 

*********

 

“You didn’t tell us you were going to set explosives!”

“Fragging -- Hatchback, I didn’t. I mean, I did, but it wasn’t going to be--”

“The cat told us at least six times to keep it down, and you thought well gee, I’ll only *blow up Formidex* because that’ll only alert the entire damn--”

“It was only going to be a message!” Beatverse nearly had to shout over the stuttering crackle of the fire alarm and shatter of falling clearplate and debris outside. He’d made a mistake, somehow, or maybe the equipment had been too old or his demolitions coding too corrupted, because how could -- had he left the leftover barrels too close? “It shouldn’t have mattered! The cybercat told us to get out in three breems anyway, so--”

“The frag!? We’re all dead mecha walking, just because you wanted to send a message!?” Hatchback’s plating was hot with fury, showing up clearly in infrared. Something else showed up too: an enormous ball of heat, radiating from somewhere around Formidex’s windowed breakroom. What had once been Formidex’s breakroom, anyway. The bay shifted subtly underpede, a different kind of movement, like something vast and deep stirring in its sleep. “Wait, where is the cat?”

“--missing, it disappeared just after we got up to the habitations and I--”

“Hey you guys you guys!” Little voices piped up, barely audible over the undulating wail of the alarm. Tiny mecha scampered everywhere, their bright colors washed pale by the hot white light.

“You lost our guide??”

The rest of the civilians couldn’t help but hear that--and reacted predictably.

“What!?”

“Wait, the cybercat is gone?”

“It must’ve meant to hand us over to the Enforcers all along! How do we get out now?” Panic and despair leaped from field to field, a spreading contagion.

“No! It ran off somewhere, but the rest of the Decepticon team met up with us!” Or, not so much ‘team that met us’ as ‘mob that fell on us.’ And not so much ‘Decepticon’ as ‘independent contractor.’ But close enough, right? Beatverse pointed furiously at the scampering creatures.

“Who?”

“Wha--” But the tiny saboteurs were gone, just vanished. Hatchback stared at him as if Beatverse had taken leave of his sanity. “Rusty dipsticks -- they were just here!” Panic spiked in the mecha around him; some looked they were on the verge of breaking and peeling out the bay door, into the exposed courtyard. “You saw them too! Fragging fouling factors and flash gas, we all saw them! Wirecutter, you saw them!”

No one said anything. Another sheet of Formidex's clearplate slid down to the courtyard with a thundering crash.

“Well, I--” said Wirecutter, shifting uneasily.

“Hey you guys you guys! Proxy ran through the brake lines and up the steering column and he put the red and the blue wires together and then Tripwire found the --”

“Whut the frag?” The skittery little things were back, scampering around like drones gone mad. “Stop careening everywhere like that! Primus! You and you, help those mecha unload their cargoes, and you--”

The team of tiny saboteurs ignored him. “We’re hotwiring a truck!” Spindly blue arms waved at him from a wide side door that separated the cargo bays.

“A truck isn’t going to help!” Beatverse clenched his fists in an attempt to keep himself from doing something he might regret, like grabbing one of the little things and shaking some sense into that pointy helm. “You little -- do you even see how much scrap these mecha--”

And then, with a rumble like a great beast shifting, an engine ticked over.

A very, very large engine.

“Uhm,” Runaround had moved over to the side door, peering through the opening. Tiny mecha scampered crazily around his pedes, and the hot white light washed out the drab red of his plating. “You should maybe take a look at this, Beatverse.”

“You’ve gotta be pulling my pede gimbals,” Beatverse stomped over, pushing the much lighter-weight civilian out of his way. “We don’t have time for--” and then whatever he was going to say disappeared from his vocalizer. Beatverse gaped.

For in the bay beside this one... was a truck. No, not a truck. The hunched hulk was too big for that. A transport, massively armored in acid-scarred plates, each bigger than Beatverse’s entire frame, with huge, spiked treads and bristling with the barrels of plasma cannons. The sheer weight of it subtly bowed the flooring, even Formidex’s substruts straining under the load. The thing could grind its way over mountain ranges, over deep-split chasms, places where roads had long since rusted away. The body of the transport was hollowed, built to carry a thousand mechanotons of supplies and dozens of soldiers.

Not a truck. A _tank._

“Primus.” That would definitely carry all the supplies and their little band of mecha both, with plenty of room to spare, but--the cybercat had warned them to be quick and quiet. And a tank was definitely NOT either of those things.

The building shuddered again, and there was a distant boom as something large and heavy crashed down. As if waking from their sleep, the first of Formidex’s alarm sirens stuttered to life. They began to wail a counterpoint to the Enforcer alarms, the audible warnings interspersed with powerful, automatic comm broadcasts. Even mecha outside the district were going to hear that alarm.

“Well that’s torn it,” Beatverse said sourly. Quick and quiet was obviously no longer going to be in the cards. He looked down at Hatchback. “Looks like we’re going to have to bust out of here.”

“But we--”

“Look--do you want to take this stuff back to the mecha who need it? Or do you want to stand here and argue until the Enforcers come back? Or until Formidex loses his patience and locks down the whole complex? Because the way I see it, there’s only one way left out of here,” Beatverse snapped, fed up with civilian dithering. “Let’s load up and haul aft!”

The command seemed to snap the rest of the civilian mecha out of their terrified paralysis; they jumped into action, scampering for the pile of supplies and pitching armfuls into the rumbling tank. Others took the more expedient route of simply driving into the cavernous interior and dumping their excess cargo. All the while the little saboteurs skittered everywhere, hopping up and down, on and around the rumbling tank, a few doing little impatient dances atop the forward cab.

“Go go go hurry!” urged a bright yellow one, optics and audials flickering nervously as the sirens redoubled, the Enforcers’ own internal comm alarms belatedly catching up to the complex’s warning systems. The dual wailing, audible and comm, made it hard to even think. “We need to run drive go!”

“Frag me, heard ya the first time,” Beatverse growled, swinging up into the front of the tank. Most of the high-value supplies had been loaded--his neighbors might be civilians, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know how to get a job done. Especially when their collective afts were on the line. “Get in!” he hollered at a few stragglers still struggling with larger crates, even as Hatchback boosted a smaller minibot into the tank’s interior. “Leave the rest and let’s go!”

A bright red head popped out of a gap in the control console. “Hey I found this button right here and what do you think it doe--”

“Gah!” Beatverse jerked hard enough to clunk his helm against the unforgiving plates of the cab ceiling. The scurrying, brightly-colored creatures had to be teleporters -- it was the only possible explanation. “What the Pit are you -- no, put that back!” The little thing squeaked and ducked back down as the ex-warframe made a grab for the piece. Wires still dangled from it, and he fumbled at the button mechanism, trying to jam it back into position. How the Pit could six -- seven? -- little mecha cause so much trouble in so short a time? “Primus, are you all insa--” and then Beatverse registered the rest of the console.

Blinking lights and magnetic wave HUD displays blinked and flickered in a multitude of levels, laid over levers and scrolling indicators of every sort. Beatverse had been infantry, a heavyweight footsoldier, a grunt. He didn’t know how to use any of this. The scrabbling as the tiny saboteurs skittered around inside and did Primus-knew-what didn’t help either.

Gasping, Hatchback heaved himself into the seat next to Beatverse, the hatch slamming shut behind him. “Ok, we’re ready! Everyone’s loaded, we just have to -- what is it?”

Beatverse swallowed heavily.

Ok, all right. He could do this. He had no training, no experience with equipment this large, but everything was labeled with glyphs, with words, and he *knew* words. Knew the shape of them, the feel of them, the way they came together and could be pulled apart. He knew them down to the spark of him. Military shorthand, even this very specialized sort, was just another kind of language. He could do this. He had to.

His big, multi-threaded processors kicked into gear -- tracing glyphs, comparing and discarding a million possible contractions, linking etymology with meaning. They co-opted military coding, too, drawing connections from the experience of countless battles. The most vital controls would be closest to hand, and then the ones most commonly used. If *this* command was for the gunnery exhaust, then MF had to be the mushroom torque followers, and then there should be -- yes, the cam bearings, and that meant steering systems. He hoped. The analysis had taken only a split astrosecond, and Beatverse put his hand over a heavy yoke, flicked through the indicators until he found one that seemed right, that *felt* right, and pinned the command in place. Then he eased the yoke forward.

The tank bucked like a great beast, screams filtered through the cab from the cramped mecha stuffed into the back. And then, with a terrible grinding crunch, the tank heaved itself backwards and crushed the rear wall of Formidex’s loading bay.

“Aiiiieeeeotherwayotherway!” Hatchback lunged as tiny saboteurs went tumbling in bright streaks of color all over the forward cab, grabbed Beatverse’s hand, and yanked it back.

Careful calculation of words and meaning went straight out the window. “IknowIknowOHPRIMUS!” Transmission gears thunked all along the sides of the tank, and the huge, bladed treads reversed themselves with a squeal like the Unmaker’s own joints creaking. The massive transport stabbed ahead, the whole front segment rising up, the sheer weight of the thing churning the floor plating into twisted scrap.

But it was working, it was going to work! Until Beatverse blinked past the indicators and displays and realized they’d forgotten one critical detail: Formidex’s bay door was still closed.

The sheetmetal door was huge, doubly reinforced, meant to keep safe a city’s ransom in Enforcer supplies and equipment--and locked down by massive, magnetic clamps. Beatverse seized what he hoped was an internal announcements channel. “Everyone hold on tight,” he shouted as the tank surged from the rubble of Formidex’s back wall. “We’re gonna--”

And then they rammed the door.

“Aieee-eep-eep-eep!” Tiny micromecha bounced and tumbled all over the cabin like a shaken jar of confetti. The impact slammed Beatverse and Hatchback into their seats so hard they could both feel something crack in the military-grade structure of the cab. Huge plates of nanomolecular steel tore apart like wisps of metalmesh, crashing down around them in a thunderous roar, bouncing from the tank’s armor and cratering the courtyard.

Blades screaming almost as loudly as the mecha inside, treads crushing the fallen chunks of door, the tank exploded out into the light.

 

*********

  
_A few klicks earlier…._

Widecast had nearly made it to the side door to the courtyard - the area they used for sorting detained dust grubbers from the truly dangerous - when the first explosion heaved him right off his wheels.  "What the--?!" The whole detention complex bucked, the floor lurching underfoot, sending the Enforcer skidding sideways into a rack of industrial-strength shockprods.

Widecast froze where he had fallen, electrical prickles of fear sparking down his backstruts as the shockprods clattered all over his plating and rolled across the floor. Enforcer-grade shockprods were notoriously fickle and prone to discharge. Magnetic latches should have been securing them to the rack; how the frag had they gotten loose? If one glitched and went off, he probably wouldn't come online again until next orn.

The shuddering stopped. Very gingerly, Widecast rolled to one side, pushing up onto his pedes. The entire floor was a minefield of disorganized weaponry. Widecast pinged Formidex, sending inquiry-packets about the nature of the explosion, only to receive nothing but static hiss and preemptory _hold/processing/busy_ glyphs from the cityformer. Snarling, Widecast took one slow, unsteady step, then another, making his careful way through the maze of shockprods. He double-checked with optics and sensory arrays before every mincing, careful step, peering downward over his own prominent chestplates--

\--and then the alarms went off. The onslaught of sound caught him off guard; he tottered, arms windmilling, even as he frantically tried to dial down his audials. "Frag! Fraggitall, Formi!" he shouted over the noise, not caring whether or not the cityformer heard. Those slagging rodents were going to pay when Widecast caught up with them, oh yes they fragging were!

Formidex's own fire sirens joined the Enforcer intrusion alarms just as Widecast reached the door, duelling discordant wails combined with comm broadcasts. The powerful automatic announcements were broad-banded and loud enough to give a mech a fragmented processor, broadcasting long lists of evacuation plans, areas where mecha could take refuge, and Primus knew what else. Widecast stumbled the last few steps to the hatch with hands clamped over his comm receivers, trying desperately to dial down the input. Comm-blinded and nearly deafened, he palmed the door open--and gaped.

The entire courtyard was illuminated in stark white light. The light was coming from above, from a white-hot inferno on the third level, around where the breakroom was. Or rather, where it had been; the clearplate windows for that section were gone now, nothing but shards over the ground below. The entire upper part of the complex moved ponderously, ejecting the still-flaming contents of that room out into the streets, lifting up and spreading as if to shake off the sting.

In the face of such obvious sabotage, an ordinary mech might never have noticed the rest of it. But Widecast was an Enforcer, coded for investigation and the preservation of order. Base protocols spun up, observing data-points, collating them into patterns of evidence and correlating with known suspects. The explosion, the damaged section, the communications networks sabotaged beyond any possibility of recovery by those slagging rodents … and below the shattered upper section were the bay doors to the storage sublevels. Most of them were closed, locked down tight. But one, cast in stark relief by the unrelenting light... one was ajar, open just wide enough for a normal-sized mech to slip through.

What. The. Frag?

 _//Secure the gates!//_ Widecast snarled to the only other Enforcer left in the complex, snatching up a shockstick. _//We may have an incursion. Hold your position; fire on any mecha who come close. I’ve got this. Nothing gets in or out!//_ He stalked out into the courtyard, igniting the prod as he went. The violent purple glow left afterimages as he whipped the business end through the air. He didn’t know what kind of opportunistic, dust-venting scraplets had broken in, but Widecast would take care of them all right. He’d slagging present the pile of their broken-aft frames to his superiors. Pit, he might even get a commendation outta this, if he spun his story right. There was no way he was gonna let--!

A low rumble vibrated under his pedes. The sound was so deep, it made tiny chips of metal and shattered clearplate vibrate up from the courtyard. Widecast froze in front of a set of still-closed bay doors. These ones, at least, hadn’t been breached, their enormous magnetic locks still clamped tight. Where was that sound coming from? Was one of Formidex’s massive gears shifting into a new configuration? Frowning, Widecast took a more hesitant step, pivoting as he tried to identify the source of the noise. The partially-open bay door beckoned, right beside this one. But the sound wasn’t coming from there--so where was it coming from?

The rumble grew louder, vibrating up from the heavy iron groundplates, until it felt like it his struts were rattling against each other. Widecast began to turn, bringing battle protocols online, internal weaponry going live. It sounded like -- like ….

The rumble turned into a booming, crashing roar. And then the locked bay doors beside him *buckled*. The massive sheets of metal bulged, then exploded outward in a cataclysm of Pit-fire and sharp-edged iron shrapnel. Widecast had just enough time to realize that this wasn’t just another act of sabotage, that there was a slagging three thousand mechanoton *dreadnought* churning straight towards him--

\--and then a wall of reinforced durabyllium armor slammed into his frame and sent him flying.

The world turned upside down, blurring into a dizzying sweep of impact reports, of fire and a thousand shades of blackened metal. Widecast’s chronometer faithfully counted down the eternity it took-- _two astroseconds, three astroseconds, four_ \--before his helm smashed into the ground. The impact knocked entire sensor suites offline, jarred systems from helm to pedes. There was the unmistakable sound of silicon breaking--his primary optics shattering. His higher processors struggled with the sudden onslaught of damage reports and resets, but his battle protocols were already queued and ready. They knew what to do, and he executed the commands, fingers tightening around the shockprod, ready to leap to his pedes and take down the interlopers.

 _Six astroseconds_ , his chronometer reported blandly, even as his frame refused to obey his directives. Belatedly, he realized his legs were caught, still pinned. The dreadnought, the tank--it hadn’t *stopped*, it was still moving forward, gaining speed, and Primus--! The tread rolled over his pedes and lower legs, crushing them beneath bladed links, and a surprised shriek of agony tore its way from his vocalizer. Widecast convulsed, his overloaded systems trying desperately to shut down the new onslaught of pain-signals, to reroute damage. His frame shook, digits spasming open. And like the slow, inevitable fall of a shuttle into the sun, the live shockprod tumbled from his hand. The butt end bounced once against his chestplate. Through hazed optics, he saw the live end fall, trailing a brilliant purple afterimage, tilting sideways, crackling with electricity, falling, falling …

... to discharge against his helm.

Seven astroseconds later, Widecast no longer saw anything at all.

 

*********

 

“Eeep-eep-eep!” Tiny mecha were flying everywhere, bouncing off Beatverse’s helm and heavy shoulderplates as the terrible grinding treads of the tank reared skywards, up and up, only to come caving down with a splintering crash that shook the big mecha to their sparks. Splinters of the mag-locked bay door, once so impregnably solid, flew up like dust as the the tank ground larger chunks under its terrible treads. Something flashed at the periphery of the viewscreen, a brief flicker of purple/blue -- but then it was gone, the tank past it, engines roaring under them like some great leashed beast.

Not very well-leashed, at that. Flaming debris still peppered the transport’s thick-plated sides as Formidex shook himself. The jouncing, rumbling tank ride rattled both Beatverse and Hatchback so hard, their substruts clanked. And they weren’t going any faster than a mech could jog. The Enforcers were gonna laugh themselves outta their lugnuts if they came back to find Beatverse and all the civilians still in the midst of some kind of slow-motion escape, that was for fragging sure. Beatverse could hardly keep his hands steady as he fumbled through the controls, trying to find -- ok, yes, there was the fuel pressure, and that one might be acceleration or, no, maybe this one over here....

Hatchback grabbed at Beatverse’s shoulder pauldron. The drab gray and brown mech now had a multicolored blob -- two of the saboteurs, apparently -- clinging firmly to his helm finials. But the civilian’s optics were fixed firmly on the forward viewscreen. “Where are the gun controls?”

“Gimme a minute. Shooting out the front gate ain’t going to help unless I can get us moving faster than this,” Beatverse started grimly, trying to sort through menus of options.

“Where are the GUN CONTROLS?!”

The terror in Hatchback’s voice dragged Beatverse’s optics up… just in time to watch the biggest damn tankframed Enforcer he’d ever seen come scrambling out of one of the supply sheds. And while even a big mech would be hard-pressed to do more than dent a transport like this with his own onboard weaponry… this Enforcer was dragging a fragging rocket launcher.

A model CY-A62-12 ground-to-air artillery piece, if Beatverse wasn’t very much mistaken, and how the *Pit* a suburban contingent of Enforcers had gotten their talons on a chunk of military hardware like that, Beatverse had no idea. The thing was meant to punch holes in alien shuttles. At this distance, it’d leave most of Formidex’s courtyard a smoking ruin. Which not only meant that they’d have one very annoyed cityformer on their hands, but the tank wouldn’t be going anywhere.  Assuming it even survived being hit in the first place.

“What are you waiting for?! This thing has weapons, doesn’t it?!” In a panic, Hatchback passed his talons through the softlight control displays, making an absolute hash of the ordered lists and columns.

“Yes but I -- fragging stop that, you’re not -- I don’t know how to work them yet!” Beatverse managed, shoving Hatchback into his chair with one big hand, combing frantically through the disordered controls with the other.

“Ohno oh no we’re all gonna die -- run away run away! -- no don’t you guys --” Tiny saboteurs skittered and leaped everywhere, a lashing tail vanished right into a gap in the console, more saboteurs clung to just *everything*, getting unerringly in the way.

“Stop! Stop that right now -- enough!” Beatverse roared, prying a skinny little frame off of his faceplates.

“Ohnoohno! Oh*no*ohnono ...!” The saboteurs echoed, careening even more crazily. On the viewscreen, the Enforcer planted the powerpack of his rocket launcher and heaved its massive tube onto one heavy shoulder. Charge crackled blue around the gaping maw of the thing.

“Slagging … spark-eating rust-cored piston rod!” Beatverse roared, giving up his effort to keep Hatchback away from the controls, in favor of pushing as many commands as he could. At least he had an instant of quiet -- all of the tiny saboteurs flinched down at the raw vulgarity, turning a multitude of shocked optics on the big purple ex-warframe. Beatverse ignored them, searching frantically through lines of code and overlapping menus for weapons, energy shields, anything. Or even a fragging reset button, for Primus’ sake--was that too much to ask??

Apparently it was. Option after option flashed past--no, he did not want to reset all glyphs to the Vosian dialect!--the tank trundling blindly forward towards the Enforcer. The launcher glowed, excess charge building, sparks popping off the rim as the weapon prepared to fire--

Then there was a flash of movement, a streaking blur, and an entire pack of cyberhounds piled into the courtyard at full speed. Ahead of them ran a flash of silver and ebony--the cybercat, Ravage. Beatverse had only a moment to appreciate the damage that the Decepticon had apparently already inflicted upon his pursuers in the form of scorch marks, torn and missing armor, and damaged audials and optics.  Then Ravage skidded, spun sideways.  Talons digging deep into the softer iron groundplates, he launched himself into the air, clearing the unsuspecting Enforcer in a single, powerful leap. The cyberhounds weren’t nearly so agile; the entire pack crashed straight into the unsuspecting mech, bowling the Enforcer over in their single-minded pursuit of their prey. The rocket launcher, already primed, fired. The backblast sent cyberhounds tumbling like flakes of rust, even as the plasma bolt careened into the air, twisting wildly before impacting on a distant spire in an explosion of flames and debris. The technimals scrambled in all directions, their plating scorched, primitive coding in disarray. The Enforcer pushed up to his pedes -- just in time to scramble sideways, buccal unit agape, watching helplessly as the tank rumbled right over the power pack to his rocket launcher, crushing it into a pile of sparking metal shards.

From the top of the tank, there was the faintest sound of scratching, the scrape of talons against armor plate. With a complex series of beeps, an emergency hatch hissed open. The cybercat dropped down into the control pod, and surveyed the inhabitants.

“Can anyone tell me what exactly you think you’re doing?” Ravage’s scarlet gaze swept over, and pinned a shrinking Hatchback in place. “And why, for that matter, you decided to steal a tank?”

“Ravage!”

Any answer Hatchback might have given was drowned out by the sudden cacophony of tiny voices. “Ravage ravage Ravage you’re alivewellnotdead Ravage yay!” Saboteurs leaped from their perches, swarming to where the cybercat stood.

“We were afraid you were deactivated!”

“I wasn’t! I knew he was fine I told you guys--”

“No you didn’t! Outbound said--”

“I did too! I knew Ravage would come back and he did, he did and he’s here and now--!”

“Enough.” The growl was accompanied by a sharp glyph, reinforcing the command. The little saboteurs fell silent, optics wide, as Ravage bounded up to the driver’s station. “We needed to be out of here a breem ago. Why haven't you shifted into higher gearing?”

“Because I don’t know where to fragging find it!” Beatverse snapped, exasperated and angry. “This slagging thing has commands inside of commands. Everything is all slagged up, I can’t find the right string sets, and--”

“Let me at the console.” Ravage shouldered forward, one taloned pede tapping delicately at the softlight menus. There was a brief flurry of numbers and comm packets, the interface reconfiguring with dizzying speed--and suddenly the tank lurched into a higher gear, picking up the pace, the big engines rumbling at a higher pitch as the war machine charged forward.

“What the--”

“Override codes. Easy enough to find if you know what to look for.” Despite the terse nature of the answer, the glyphs were abrupt, but not condescending, the cybercat still distracted. “And gunnery controls would be-” A few more talon-taps, “-here. I assume you know what to do with these?”

“Yes.” Beatverse growled. The outside gate loomed before them in the main viewscreen, growing larger by the astrosecond. His blunt-taloned hands closed around the firing throttles. “Yes, I do.”

 

**********

 

“Haven’t you been checking the newsnets?”

The drab gray merchant scowled back at his lone customer. “Well look, I’ve been a little busy trying to keep this place from getting looted, right? At least with those alarms going off, the crowds have cleared out a little.”

“Yeah, but -- I heard the Enforcers were gonna take half our allotments, which I guess is why there was a riot in the first place,” the green minibot slid a credit chit across the counter, subspacing his purchases.

“Seriously? Huh. Well, I guess that explains it -- “ the merchant leaned out to peer between the sheets of recycled iron that he'd hastily assembled to protect the clearplate windows. Mecha still milled uncertainly in the big plaza, staring up at Formidex’s upper towers. Chunks of flaming debris were scattered all over the ground too. “Well. Now what?”

“Whoah,” the minibot sidled closer to the hatch, leaning out. “I didn’t think he was supposed to do that, or we were supposed to get warnings first or… you gotta come see this.”

‘This’ was apparently Formidex’s configuration shift. One whole section of his upper level had lifted up and out, exposing an enormous wall, covered in brilliant white flames, to the cold wind. No, not flames. Rather, flaming glyphs entwined, a blazing message to be seen by everyone in all of Nyon.

 _Freedom,_ they read. _The liberation of a righteous path, the answer to shame and starvation. Freedom._

And, underscoring them all, the same modifier that had been in the news every fragging orn, the modifier the Enforcers applied with such derision: _Decepticon._

Bright blue flames crackled over the compound walls, and then the Enforcer gates exploded outward, ripped clean off their slide rails. Screaming mecha scrambled aside just in time, as something huge came barreling out of the smoke and fire.  Was it an alt-mode?  Whatever it was, it was demonic-looking, big as a Guardian and haloed in heat. It churned the ground as it roared down the main road; everything shook violently as it passed. It… looked like the helm and forebody of a cybercat had been mounted to the top. Or no, not mounted -- rather they were poking up from some kind of access hatch? The creature’s optics gleamed a military red. And then the entire massive mechanism careened around a corner, bladed treads screaming on metal, and was gone from sight.

The air was thick with broad-banded comms as mecha warned each other to clear the streets for the oncoming juggernaut. The merchant stood, frame locked, optics as wide as his customer’s. “What the frag was that?” he breathed at last, as the smoke started to clear.

The minibot craned his helm. “Dunno. But I think it might’ve done us a favor.”

Other mecha had noticed, too -- the massive gates guarding the Enforcer compound were gone, just twisted wreckage. In that gap… stood a single stunned Enforcer. Alone.

Behind him, the door to the Enforcer warehouses was also torn apart, blasted from its moorings. Even the door to the main prison unit was standing wide open -- as if blithely offering up access to the cells into which so many mecha had disappeared, never to return.

The green minibot swept his glossa across his dentae. “Hey, wasn’t it you, told me they shook you down for optical cleaner, just a coupla’ orns ago?”

The drab gray merchant hunched his plating forward, eyeing that lone Enforcer. “Yeah. Yeah, that was me.”

The Enforcer took an uncertain step back, and then another, as the crowd began to converge. Even at the other end of the plaza, they could hear the officer engage his loudspeakers. “All mecha: disperse. Retreat to your homes. You will be prosecuted for continued civil disobedience. All mecha: disperse immediately--”

They didn’t.

“Y’know … I think it might be a good orn to close up early,” the green minibot suggested, slipping out the hatch.

The drab gray merchant ducked down behind his counter… and came up with the last little plasma handgun in his stock. He’d been saving it for something special. “Think you might be right,” he told the empty shop; then went to join the growing crowd.


	8. Chapter 8

_//Soundwave.//_ The distance was too great to use any cohort channels. Ravage was forced to bounce his message instead between carefully-shielded waystations and repeaters -- an insistent call into the darkness of Cybertron’s digital drift.

 _//Here. Ravage: report.//_ The brevity of the return glyphs stood in stark contrast to their anxious undertones.

Ravage curled his talons against the rim of the emergency hatch, sensory spines slicked back against his faceplates with the speed of the tank’s progress. But progress where? One rank of buildings seemed very like another, on the edge of Nyon. Horrified mecha scrambled from their path, or stood agape on the side of the road. They were leaving in their wake thousands of witnesses, a track even a blind mech could follow, and a city full of Enforcers eminently capable of hunting them down, to say nothing of the cityformers themselves.

Nyon was ancient and vast; there had to be places for them to hide. Ravage knew of a thousand boltholes -- places where a bladeframe could lurk undiscovered through any city-wide sweep. But such places were small, meant for symbiont-sized mecha, spaces even a minibot would not think to look. Places that could conceal full-sized civilian mecha … the possibilities and probabilities were few, and Ravage had a suspicion that their numbers were narrowing by the astrosecond. _//No time. Soundwave, I need a safehouse.//_

_//Query, number of mecha?//_

_//Twenty-two. Additionally seven symbionts.//_ Ravage hesitated. _//And a behemoth-class tank.//_ The silence on the other end of the line seemed to echo. _//Perhaps there is a place we can safely discard the vehicle--//_

 _//Soundwave: acknowledges,//_ came the reply, bolstered by a stream of directives and contingencies. _//Instructions: take the next right.//_

Ravage bared his long fangs, a fierce grimace against the wind. He obeyed.

 

**********

 

Officially, this was a simple debriefing. Unofficially, it was the most agitated and crowded debriefing Soundwave had ever attended. The chamber was packed pauldron to pauldron with Decepticon intelligence officers. Centurions scurried in and out as dux of varying ranks--and more than a few legati--bristled at each other, fields radiating irritation and in a few cases outright fury. Narrow-banded comms, heavily encrypted, thickened the air as mecha resorted to speaking over one another, demanding answers of subordinates and attempting to answer their superiors.

This was no debriefing, Soundwave realized. This was an an inquest. Which then led to the next question: who--or what--was its target? In amongst all the angry swirls of code, however, were more than a few lazy coils of satisfaction -- pleasure in an opportunity seized. As Soundwave picked them apart, they delivered up all the answer he needed. Ah. So it was going to be like that, was it?

The hatch to the conference room hissed open. Dropkick shoved his way inside, plating flared with irritation. “I’m here, and I’d better get some slagging answers about what the frag happened to my rebel units.” The legati was a groundframe, armored in subdued purples and greys, but the flare of authority in his field was unmistakable, and the lesser mecha in the room cringed under that stormfront of anger.

“Sir!” The nearest dux snapped to attention. Dropkick paid them little heed, swiveling to pin the lesser legati with a displeased stare.

“I had two strikes planned, just waiting for openings -- which, I don’t have to tell you, those riots provided in spades. But when I gave the orders, I suddenly find I have no mecha to execute them!” Dropkick surveyed the room. “I do not believe I need to tell anyone here that this is NOT how we handle an op. So, explanations. Now.”

Schism lifted his hands placatingly. “That is why we are all here, Legati. Please, take a seat, and we will review what intel we have on the situation.”

“Situation--! All of Nyon is in an uproar, I’ve lost half my contacts and can scarcely get through to the rest, the rumors are thicker than twitchflies on an empty, and not one mech can tell me what the leaking Pit is going on!”

“Hn,” Schism templed his fingertips. “Perhaps we should start at the beginning. This... is what we have.”

A coded signal flashed like a ghostlight in the acid swamp of confusion and anger, and Soundwave caught it up, examined it, then let it through. The big screens blinked on in response. “This is Fastlane, one of my division’s oldest and most loyal operatives in Nyon,” said Schism, as the spy’s data and specifications scrolled. “At exactly 04:01 joor this morning, we registered an unauthorized access to the agent’s logins.”

More data appeared, rapidly flashing as the display flagged various edits made to the permissions trees. Idly, Soundwave forwarded a ping to Frenzy, letting the symbiont know that one of his favorite codecracks left enough pedeprints to be followed by a sufficiently-determined network specialist. A pity; it had been an elegant little virus.

“Looks like someone was trying to cut him off,” observed a grizzled old veteran, optics narrowed.

“And so someone did,” said Schism, continuing. “At 04:02, we began receiving emergency pings on these channels. And at 4:42, our tracking data cut out, suggesting that Fastlane had been capt--"

"Frag the agent," Dropkick snarled, talons fisting. "Those are our mainwave Nyon channels! The central hubs that every fragging unit uses to communicate with Kaon! You’re telling me they were compromised?!"

Schism tilted his helm. “That’s exactly what happened, yes.” Fields flared bright with alarm and anger both. “For exactly one hundred and thirty-seven astroseconds, from 04:02 until just after 04:04 this orn, our entire spy network in Nyon was exposed. The breach went undetected for joors.” More code crawled the screens. “The only reason we did not suffer catastrophic damage… was this: the automatic protocols performed a routine passcode update, closing off the leak. It was only luck that the sabotage came so close in time to those automatic updates.”

Mecha murmured, comms flying thick. Those timestamps… meant that the systems were exposed for almost two kliks. Which was more than enough time to unravel the Decepticon spy network in Nyon, depending on where and to whom the codes had been leaked. “How much did they get?” asked a lean gray-plated tribunus.

Dropkick’s fisted talons thumped the scarred table. “More to the point -- who? Who fragged up the system this bad, and why?”

“Why, indeed,” Schism said, lifting his plating in a gesture that most mecha would have recognized as a shrug. “Aside from the loss of Fastlane, and the disarray of most of the city’s rebel units, we seem to have lost no data to enemy hands. Given this, my analysts and I feel that incompetence is more likely than sabotage.” The room echoed with grinding gears. “As to who -- unfortunately, I believe I have the answer to that, as well.”

Schism cleared his vocalizer and stood, slowly, hands flat against the holographic tabletop. “I regret to inform you,” he said, “that the leak originated within my own front. We have tracked the codes to one mech. My newest tribunus -- Soundwave.”

Every helm turned, every sensor swiveled. The wash of anger and frustration felt like a rising tide of muddy tension. Some of the gazes skipped over Soundwave, uncertain of who he was. But enough of these mecha knew Soundwave -- or knew of him -- and in any case, his sleeker civilian frame stood out starkly from all the heavy warframes. For a moment, the only sound was the heavy snarl of grinding gears. Schism reset his vocalizer, as if betraying regret. In contrast, noxious yellow satisfaction clung like a cloud around his social relays, rose like smoke from his processors. “Now, I understand your concerns. I have already begun the demotion process--”

The big holoscreens along the walls, each of them bearing the evidence against Soundwave… flickered with static. The scrolling glyphs slowed, trailing ghostly afterimages in energon-pink, as if time itself was dilating. The holographic tabletop under Schism’s hands went blank, and from the way the legati jerked, it was clear the sudden change hadn’t been intended.

At least, not by Schism.

Soundwave spoke into that startled moment of silence. “Presented data points, accurate. Conclusions: incorrect.” The words--flat, mechanically dispassionate--slotted into the the air like precisely assembled slabs, though the assembled mecha could not yet see the shape of what Soundwave intended to build.

“Oh really?” Dropkick had not risen to his current position by being stupid, or by taking anything at face value. Still, at his spark he was a warframe. It had taken millennia of harsh self-discipline to master the stillness required of a spymaster, to ingrain in his coding the pathways to observe, and observe again, to analyze and *think*--and only then to act. “If you think self-serving justifications will save you, Tribunus--” he began, deliberately dismissive. Waiting, like all the rest, to see how Soundwave would react.

“Negative. Justifications, irrelevant. Facts and outcomes, take precedence.” Soundwave’s red-visored gaze was impassive, his field well-controlled, with no hint of nervousness. The screens flickered, then snapped to life with new images. Images of the darkened underbelly of Nyon, and of a huddled mass of desperate, forgotten mecha.

_//We’re not… none of us are fighters. Not even the warframes. They dumped those stacks long ago. This plan … what you’re asking us to do...//_

_//Not I.//_ The voiceprint was familiar, as was the frame. Regardless, Soundwave helpfully tagged the image with identifiers, leaving no room for doubt at whom they were looking at. Fastlane continued, weaving a web of confident assurances.

_//But rather, Lord Megatron himself. He will supply all the expertise you require… once your attack has begun. But you have to meet him halfway. You heard his call to arms -- would you refuse it? For yourself, or for all the others here who rely on your leadership?//_

The battered little civilian mech looked around, fear warring visibly with hope. The legati watched as he straightened under the invocation of Megatron’s name.   _//I… no. No. We’ll be there, we’ll begin the attack, just like you said.//_

_//Good. Seventy-three joors; you can’t be late. The forces waiting to step in -- if they see you hesitate, see you retreat… your diversion will be in vain. The Lord Protector’s troops will fall back, and then...//_

_//I know,//_ the civilian said simply, helm lowered. _//I know.//_

The memory clip froze on the tableau, capturing Fastlane’s confidence, the civilian’s desperate hope and fear. “Reports from Nyon, unsatisfactory,” Soundwave said evenly. “Additional agent, dispatched. His initial discovery: what you have seen.” Scarlet-visored optics passed over Schism, settling on Dropkick. “Betrayal and elimination of Decepticon sympathizers within Nyon: authorized by high command?”

“You know fragging well it wasn’t,” Dropkick growled, engine revving low and underscoring the words. These warframes might not have much sympathy for the plight of civilian mecha, but that didn’t mean they weren’t useful. Especially in a Senate-held city-state like Nyon. Worse, Fastlane had invoked Megatron’s name in his lies. When this rebellion failed, as it inevitably would, any survivors would be quick to tell stories about their perceived betrayal, of reinforcements that had never arrived. What few embers of resistance left in Nyon would be snuffed out as the propaganda war shifted in the Senate’s favor, and comm-whispers spread from one disillusioned mech to the next: that Lord Megatron could not be trusted. That the Decepticons were no better than the Senate, their promises convenient lies.

Soundwave inclined his helm in acknowledgment of Dropkick’s anger. “Fastlane: obviously compromised. Agent, authorized to take action.” A new clip flickered up on the holoscreens, impeccable in its fidelity, even if the vantage point was obviously more distant than the first. Still, the intercepted comms were clear, as were the images of Fastlane’s rendezvous.

“Bit of energon before your duty-shift, Markdown?”

“Yup.” Dozens of optics watched as Fastlane made friendly chitchat with the two white-armored Senate Enforcers. “Another busy shift coming up--gotta get this quarter-vorn’s expense reviews and recommendations pushed out. Gotta run, have a good orn, Enforcers--”

Tracing over the image, Soundwave overlaid his analysis of the glyphs--and the contents of the data-packet that Fastlane had attempted to slip to the Enforcers. The assembled mecha stirred, a flurry of comms at the extent of the data Fastlane had been prepared to hand over.

Schism, however, was not so easily swayed. “A compelling rebuttal, Soundwave. But how do we know it is not one made wholly out of misdirections and lies? It is, after all, very easy to damn one captured spy as a traitor in order to cover your own mistakes,” he growled, grasping at control, trying to redirect the shape of this narrative.

The screens around the room, under Schism’s talons, all flickered with figures as Soundwave queued up the streams he wanted. “Data: easily verified. Independent investigation, will show matching Enforcer movements, packet analysis,” Soundwave pointed out.

“Is that so?” Schism said slowly, machinations a dense weave throughout his processors. Soundwave had outplayed the spylord at every turn; why was there so much triumph threaded through those codes? “Then you can…”

The hatch behind Soundwave hissed open, and the sun boiled in.

So focused had he been on the happenings within this room, Soundwave was unprepared. But then, what preparation was possible for something like this? Even with his backplates to the hatch, his sensor panels folded, he could feel the wash of that great field beating against his haptic suite, solid as a bodyblow. Power rolled in, confidence supreme, all fiery beauty and brutal violence, balanced on a blade’s edge.

Lord Megatron had arrived.

It was art made math, a gravity rainbow, these potent curls of equations and code, firmware running on levels that seemed new each time he glimpsed the smallest part of it. Awe struck him numb, made him fumble his own stacks, terror and reverence so intertwined that it was impossible to say where one began and the other ended. He was -- Soundwave was -- he caught his tensors before they could fold, could send him crashing down onto his kneeplates. No. Not now, his plans -- in the midst of this golden maelstrom, phoenix-code washing over his plating, Soundwave freed the thinnest reed of a tertiary thread, and locked down the module.

It worked.  The blinding code faded, uncovering a frame brutally beautiful in its own right. But that code... It felt like closing off a limb, like losing part of himself… very nearly like losing a symbiont.

He could not dwell on that loss, however. Somehow Schism had arranged for Lord Megatron’s presence. That much was evident, judging from the other mech’s satisfaction, writ clear on his faceplates as he watched Soundwave’s field. How much had the carrier betrayed over the past few moments? Just what could the older spylord possibly gain from such a high-stakes gambit? Soundwave was uneasily aware that he had no idea what Schism’s endgame was, and he dared not dig for answers.

Dropkick had turned to face the Lord Protector, saluting, the rest of the mecha in the room following suit. Soundwave did the same, one taloned fist rising to the level of his spark, over his faction insignia, as he inclined his helm. It felt like a poor genuflection, the merest shadow of what was owed. But it gave him a moment to scramble after dropped threads.

“Lord Megatron. You honor us with your presence,” Dropkick said evenly, too long a spymaster to let even this unexpected entrance throw him for long.

“Perhaps," Megatron said evenly, stepping into the room.  "It remains to be seen, however, whether you shall enjoy that particular honor.”  His sheer size made most of these warframes seem diminutive in comparison. His frame was as big as a tank’s, and yet he did not move like one. His hydraulics were silent despite the mass they shifted, his heavy plates of armor did not so much as whisper as they rubbed. He moved like Schism, like one of the many assassins packed into this room, yet subtly… more, deeper, balanced in some indefinable manner, and the spylords gave way before him. His electromagnetic field, though tightly controlled, licked across Soundwave’s plating like living lightning, as unreadable as the expression he cast impartially across the crowded room. He continued, “If this division has lost Nyon, then I suspect that none of you will.”

Schism’s expression flickered. Perhaps a tell? Did he only now realize the kind of forces he’d invoked? Because Soundwave did. The older spylord reset his vocalizer. “My Lord. We are determining what happened at this very moment. Soundwave was just explaining why he felt it necessary to expose the entirety of the Decepticon intelligence net in Nyon in order to ensure the downfall of a single double-agent.” As he spoke, the words came easier, as pointed and smooth as an energon-blade slipped neatly into the seam between armor-plates.

Attention sharpened on Soundwave, a storm of knives. The weight of ruby optics seemed heavy as the hand of a gestalt, pinning him. Soundwave cut power to his vocalizer to prevent the mechanisms for clicking in useless reset, for he had no words. He should have been monitoring the uneasy sea of fields around him, but he had attention for only one. A single, deep field, ozone-crackling, a coiled, predatory patience ... with the faintest hint of cold amusement. The Lord Protector expected more glyphs, mere words, distortions.

Megatron expected excuses. Soundwave could give him something much better.

He triggered the screens.

 

**********

 

The archiving this time was different, as if drones with cameras had somehow been inserted directly into the action. Timestamp jumps made it clear that this was a collection of vid files, of evidence stitched together into a single narrative. Unobtrusive glyphs flickered, giving designations and status-modifiers to the mecha who moved or spoke. But the resolution was just as uncompromisingly vivid.

In those images were supplies, stretching almost to the ceiling, stacked against the walls and on ranked rows of shelving. Energon--endless piles of it in marked crates--was stacked high, next to rows of replacement parts, tools, weapons, supplements … far too much for any single mech--or even a small group--to take, even if they stuffed their subspaces to the limit --

“I know, I know,” the civilian leader said, running blunted digits nervously over the nearest crate. “But there was just so much the others could use. They even had cybertronium supplements in storage--enough to cover all the sparklings’ upgrades for at least a vorn. Plus medical supplies, energon, parts for the mechlings who’re coming into full frames. I know the Decepticon told us to take weapons and ammunition, but … how could we just leave all this behind, when the others need it so badly?” Hatchback’s field was hazed with staticky distress as he faced off against a garishly-colored warframe. Discreet glyphs identified the warframe as Beatverse: former centurion, veteran of the Parhelion war and several minor actions afterwards, had voluntarily resigned his commission in order to pursue a refit as a … poet? That last bit of data had optics cycling around the room as several assembled mecha double-checked the glyphs.

The image bobbled, then steadied, closer to the ground now, showing a number of other civilian mecha in altmodes, mainly light couriers and hovercars. Their hatches and truckbeds had been stuffed to bursting, other mecha tottering as they continued to lash still more supplies into place. Even so, more crates remained. Mecha moved awkwardly, their subspaces obviously full beyond capacity. Every one of them would stand out in a crowd, none would be able to maneuver or attain any kind of speed --

\--then, with a rumble like a great beast shifting, an engine ticked over. A very large engine. The images switched again, a flurry of angles showing the dark, imposing lines of a very *expensive* armored troop transport. It flipped back to the warframe and the civilian leader.

“Look--do you want to take this stuff back to the mecha who need it? Or do you want to stand here and argue until the Enforcers come back? Or until Formidex loses his patience and locks down the whole complex? Because the way I see it, there’s only one way left out of here,” Beatverse barked with the authority of a warframe at the end of his patience. “Let’s load up and haul aft!”

The view zoomed out, becoming grainy: the view from a microdrone spy. But the picture could still be made out, first the impregnable walls of Formidex, the forbidding gates that even a platoon of seasoned warframes would think twice before trying to overrun. Then the view panned up… to Formidex’s upper levels. Flames licked at heat-twisted spars, evidence of some terrible conflagration. Objects still fell as the cityformer reconfigured his spaces to deprive the fire of its fuel. But even through the smoke and debris, there was no mistaking the message, scrawled across a long, internal wall in hot magnesium fire.

 _Freedom,_ the glyphs read. _The liberation of a righteous path, the answer to shame and starvation. Freedom._

And the modifier to each glyph: _Decepticon._

The little camera drone shook, and the view hurriedly panned down, just as Formidex’s front gates *blasted* open. The dreadnought from before, a behemoth-class troop transport tank, came lunging from the wreckage, churning its way at top speed straight through the courtyard, crushing debris beneath its treads.

In its wake, scattered mecha converged, wary civilians peering into the forbidden Enforcer complex. Their way was barred by only a single, unsteady Enforcer, his armor bearing the telltale gouges of… cyberhound attack?

The scene changed again, this time narrowing down, once more a vividly-clear, single point of view.

Nyon’s lights whipped by. The tank was moving faster now that fewer buildings blocked its path. The transport had left the old city, where highways overlaid highways. This was a long strip of lightly-populated plain, running south along the edge of the Rust Sea. In a short while, the tank would reach wild lands and, eventually, perhaps even Decepticon-controlled territories. But for now, while there were plenty of places between warehouses and habitation blocks to fight and flee… there were none at all in which to hide. While the audacity of the theft might have taken the Nyon Enforcers by surprise, they wouldn’t be far behind. There would be no way to reach the safety of Decepticon lines, not before the Authorities caught up.

The lights vanished as the agent ducked down through the top hatch of the transport. The driver’s cab was crowded, thick with arguing voices. “Well this is just fan-fragging-tastic--”

“Sweet Primus -- it’s them! They’re coming after us! I knew they would, we’ll won't even reach the edge of the city before--”

“Oh nooo! Run away, run away!” Something bright flickered at the edges of the visual field.

“Enough.” Another voice, this one unlabeled, apparently coming from the agent providing the optical feed. “Hold your course. Be ready to lower the rear hatch.”

“Are you off your fragging rails? You may not have noticed, but there are twelve fragging mecha hot on our treads. Two more units, I don’t even know how many Enforcers, right behind them! And you want us to open the back hatch?!  We’ve got twenty mecha back there, plus a cityformer’s ransom in supplies--”

"Our pursuers are not Enforcers.” The view shifted up, panning across controls and softlight toggles of every kind. The watching mecha took in the indicators--the tank had been pushed to its maximum speed. Not past redline, but very close. “At our present speed, the Enforcers won’t reach us for point-six joor.”

“A half a joor?! We’ve got a half joor to--”

Hatchback slumped, resignation warring with the fear on his faceplates. “So we’re dumping it? Dumping everything?” Everything they’d come for, that they’d worked so hard to… well, to steal?  

“Dumping? No.” Commands scrolled up the softlight display, inputs and codes selected with what was evidently a deft touch. “Distributing among allies, yes.”

The warframe, Beatverse, seemed to catch on first, faceplates folding into a frown at the rapidly-gaining blips on the proximity sensor screen. “Sharin’ -- even worse,” he muttered.

The Decepticon agent cast him a sidelong glance. “Not really. You’ll be going with them, after all.”

“What?” That was from Hatchback, and backed by uneasy mutterings from the mecha stuffed in behind him. “Go with mecha we don’t even know? How do we know they won’t just take all of our supplies and our energon, and leave us deactivated or worse?”

The optical feed swivelled, focused onto the little mech’s battered, lightly armored frame. That vocalizer dropped in pitch, echoing down into a menacing growl. “You wanted reinforcements. I do not believe you are currently in a position to be particular about what kind. Make no mistake; each of you is a marked mech, and you will find safety only amid the ranks of more organized Decepticon sympathizers. There, you can establish alternate identities, send a portion of the supplies to your cohorts, and learn the skills to hijack more."

Hatchback still looked as if he might protest. The agent shook his helm. "Your new units will take no more than what is agreed upon--for if they do anything else, my master will know.” That rumble lightened, dark amusement evident in the agent’s words. “Unless you prefer to still be here when the Insecticons arrive?”

“Whaaat??”

 

*********

 

“A moment.” Megatron’s words were uninflected, but the command in them was unmistakable. Obediently pausing the feed, Soundwave turned. The Lord Protector assessed the carrier before him.  In that scarlet gaze was a predatory kind of amusement, much like a cybercat watching a glitchmouse jump and scurry between the cage of its talons. “Insecticons, Soundwave?“

Directing the video took little concentration; Soundwave'd had time to collect himself.  As much as possible under the circumstances, anyway.  “Affirmative,” was the simple answer. “Two Hives, nearby. Scout-dialect, easy to translate, broadcast. Insecticon transmissions, beneath Enforcer notice.”

“You would rely upon those scavengers as reinforcements, then?” Megatron shifted his weight minutely, only the faintest sound of armor against armor betraying his impatience. The mecha in the room froze, as if anticipating an explosion at any moment.

“Negative. Insecticons: not called to serve as defenders.” Soundwave allowed a small flare of satisfaction to flicker in his field, his gaze never wavering. “Insecticons: intended as bait.”

There was a moment of silence. It expanded, an indescribable impression of presence, an intangible weight, as if skirting the edge of a gravity well. Then Megatron flickered talons in an offhanded gesture. “Interesting. Proceed, Soundwave.”

 

**********

 

The rear hatch descended like a ramp, wind and the rumble of treads over uneven road a low roar in the intensely vivid feed. The lights of the city’s fringe whipped away to either side, there and then gone in the dust thrown up by the tank. Fingers hooked between the crates that lined both of the tank’s walls and filled most of the space inside, civilian-framed mecha squinted into the gloom. And then, from the dimness: headlights.

A frontliner was first, nanites darkened to shades of gray, engines roaring, racer-fast through the clouds of dust. The mech launched himself into the air, transforming in mid-leap. The ramp shuddered as he landed on two pedes, the trailing end bouncing off some unevenness in the road with a spark-spitting screech. But the heavy military equipment held up. The Decepticon sympathizer cast a look around the crowded tank internals -- he was large for such a fast mech, and old mining scars crossed his plating. “Wow … that’s one Pit of a stash,” he remarked, optics surveying the jumble of supplies, the terrified civilians.

“We have little time, Wipeout,” came the voice of Soundwave’s envoy. From the other Decepticon’s double-take, the mech before him wasn’t quite what he expected. “The Enforcers are mobilizing; it will only be a matter of time before the helios pin us all down.”

“What the-- how did you--”

“No questions. Your unit is taking these seventy crates, along with your new recruits: Dash, Downtown, Axel--” the agent named off four others, and the civilians stepped forward hesitantly.

“Now, I was thinkin’, about that--”

“Negative. The civilians go with the supplies. You will receive coordinates for a rendezvous once the Enforcers have lost our trail. If you show up without your charges--or do not show up at all--neither my master nor your handler will be pleased. Understood?” The orders were snapped with the expectation of immediate obedience, and the warframe huffed a little.

“Yeah, yeah, got it. Don’t bite the talons that feed ya. Alright you slaggers, let’s see how well you can hurl scrap.” Wipeout leaned back out of the open hatch, one hand tethering him to the outside rail. “Marlinspike, you’re up! Go!”

Engines whining, a big mech with an open-bed hauling alt edged closer, nose nearly touching the tank’s ramp, both of them doing a hundred klicks a joor over the rough road. “Move fast!” he shouted.

“You heard him!” Wipeout hooked talons into one of his unit’s designated crates, and reset his optics as a civilian stepped up to help him heave. Axel might be smaller than most of the warframes, but he was tougher than he looked, his alloys hardened by innumerable vorns of heavy labor. Moving debris, digging conduit channels -- whatever brief labor-allotments a frame like his could find. Between them, they levered the heavy crate of highgrade -- carefully -- into Marlinspike’s bed.

Smaller Decepticons soon leaped into the tank as well, the civilians helping them to subspace everything they could carry, heaving larger items aboard the biggest sympathizers. As every full hauler-mech fell away, lost to the dust and the dark, they were replaced by another with an empty hatch. One crate, one arm-load and overburdened mech at a time, the stash of stolen supplies shrank. Tiny, brightly-colored mechanisms -- maintenance drones? But they were unlabeled and very fast, and the vidfeed did not linger on them -- went with the loaded equipment, darting back and forth, leaping with high-pitched squeals on top of the crates and cannons. Mecha crammed deeper inside the tank, too far away to help load, took to stripping the tank itself, pulling long chains of incendiary rounds out of the ammo ports, loosening the weapons themselves, taking whatever they could reach.

New headlights cut through the gloom. “Come on! Those are the guys from Delta, we gotta get outta their way,” Wipeout yelled, over the roar of the wind and the road noise, as the last of his crew’s allotted supplies vanished.

“Go wh--” Axel started, as Wipeout wrapped claws around his arm, “--haaaieee!”

Both mecha went hurtling over the edge of the ramp, Wipeout transforming gracefully to hit the road on all four low-slung wheels, shoving forward just in time to keep Axel from spinning out. And then more mecha were jumping, under their own power or otherwise, tires squealing as they fell behind the tank and scattered. Each sympathizer kept close to a civilian charge, but there was no time to track where any of them went, for in the next moment another band of rebels rolled up.

“Ace, Flume, you five, you’re up!” Soundwave’s agent ordered. Amid all the chaos, his focus--and the vid feed--never faltered, sweeping unerringly to each new arrival, marking every hesitation. The loading went faster this time -- just as well, for the astroseconds were counting down. Helpfully, Soundwave overlaid a corner of the direct feed with a map, showing the ranks of enforcers, squad after squad giving chase, the Senate heliformers as they closed in upon the fleeing tank. And it was more than just a few isolated guards -- one squadron was already closing in from the front, more coming from behind. They weren’t completely surrounded, not yet, but it would only be a matter of time.

Chronometers ticked away the astroseconds. Mecha worked frantically, pushed their limits as they hurled supplies into the jouncing vehicles, dodged around one another in the close confines, launched themselves into the dark. Then, the final crew: supplies nearly all aboard, frantic and fearful civilians readying themselves for their great leap into the unknown. The agent darted through the dividing hatch, back up to the cockpit. Most of the softlight commands were flagged with red, system after system falling offline as mecha disassembled the hardware. The focus of the vid-feed turned to the civilian ringleaders. “You’re the last. Beatverse, Hatchback, you’re with this group,” the Decepticon ordered.

The warframe-turned-poet looked up. “But the tank--”

“Set to autopilot. Now, move!” The agent followed hot on their heels as the two mecha dashed towards the open ramp, giving them no opportunity to retreat. A final few supplies, mecha falling away, and then… “Not that crate,” Soundwave’s operative growled, stepping in front of one last heavy storage cube. An edge had been bent by rough handling, refined energon gleaming pink through the gap.

“Fine,” growled the approaching warframe, twisting to seize one of the tank’s hastily-disassembled plasma guns instead. “Yanno, the enforcers are gonna be on our afts in less than a klik. Hope you know what you’re doing.”

“As it happens, I do.” Something lashed out, metal screeching against metal. The gap in the crate was suddenly wider, energon dribbling from a neat puncture, a thin trickle of pink escaping down the ramp.

“Wait, wait!” Hatchback hesitated, tried to jerk away as a Decepticon seized his arm. There was nothing left of the stolen stockpile; the tank was emptied, brutally stripped. The interior lighting - what little was left of it - swung crazily with the tank's jolting, casting a multitude of purple-flickering shadows, cut by the fitful spray of greenish sparks. Internal panels and cables dangled loose. Everything that could be removed without specialized tools had gone with the Decepticons.

Everything but the engine, the drivetrain, and the gutted shell of the tank, driving blindly into the darkness. And of course, the lone agent, with his one leaking crate, leaving a trail a blind mech could follow.

"Your t-cog alright?" shouted the sympathiser over the roaring wind. "Yer altmode got wheels?"

"Yeah," started Hatchback, "but what about the-"

The warframe dragged him over the side. Tires squealed on the metal road, headlights popping up as both mecha fishtailed, fought for control... and fell behind, swallowed by Cybertron’s unending midnight.

The roar of the tank seemed to fill the empty space where they had been. The vid-feed tilted, as if the source was listening for something. Soundwave helpfully dampened the background noise, bringing one particular sound to the fore: the buzzing of distant wings.

The operative chuffed a short growl, the rumble vibrating through the hollow room. "Finally," he commented, and prowled back to the command cab.


	9. Chapter 9

Metal screech-growled against metal, the sound of dentae grinding. "Delta squadron -- that was my only spec ops unit!" Tiltwing had his fists clenched, plating seething with heat -- other Legati around the room displayed their anger as well, though generally less obviously than he. "I had plans to--"

The race played on, the noise of the tank a muted rumble through the room as Soundwave turned to face his accuser. Tearing his visor away from Megatron’s inscrutable gaze felt like turning his back on an nosoron -- only a determined exercise of will kept his plating from shifting forward defensively. It wasn’t so much the Lord Protector’s size, or his manifestly more powerful armament, or even the electric gravity of a dyad’s massive field. Rather, it was something more potent than all those things put together, a liminal sense, perhaps, of judgment hanging in the balance. “Soundwave: aware of planned factory sabotage,” he replied, making little effort to modulate his tone. Keeping his field steady in front of Lord Megatron was challenge enough. “This mission, took precedence.”

"Took preced--!"

"Even if you were authorized to decide such a thing -- which, might I point out--"

"You might have netted the Decepticon cause a hundred tons of supplies and some low value recruits, but I could have--"

Dropkick tilted his helm. "Tribunus Soundwave.” The rest of the room immediately fell silent, though fields still flared in indignation and outrage. “So far you have admitted to compromising the security of Decepticon communications in order to trap a single double-agent. You have also admitted to commandeering--without authorization--almost all of the effective Decepticon assets we had in the area.”

The spymaster did not look up at Megatron, but his armor creaked deliberately as he leaned forward. “So tell me, Soundwave. What exactly did you obtain that was worth all this?”

 

**********

  
_(earlier...)_

 

Ravage sat in the pilot’s seat of the now-empty tank, waiting. As the tank gradually slowed from its breakneck pace, he did not have to wait long. The distant hum of wings grew, rising in pitch and volume until it competed with the roar of the tank’s engines -- though the tank’s proximity scanners didn’t detect their approach until the new arrivals were all but upon him. Several loud *thuds* on the roof confirmed Ravage’s suspicions.

The first of the Insecticons had arrived.

The back hatch was still open, energon trickling in a rivulet down the ramp, and the first scout quickly took advantage of the opportunity. Sensory antennae tested the air as he hung from the top of the opening, red optics scanning for any sign of a trap. Finding none, the scout ducked inside.

Twisting fluidly in midair, he landed on back pedes, transforming upwards into his bipedal form and giving the front two pairs of limbs the freedom to grasp weapons and manipulate controls. This scout was small, as Insecticons went, less than half the size of his warrior brethren, his plating elaborately patterned in shifting cobalt blues and tarnished silvers. It was an effective bit of camouflage; even now, under the tank’s fitful lighting, the scout seemed to fade into the background.

Still, the mech was as large as a warframed frontliner, and could be just as deadly, given cause. Resisting the urge to flare his armor forward or activate battle-protocols, Ravage slunk from the shadows… and click-chirped a greeting.

“Territory^neighbor welcome.”

The sentry stopped short, helm tilting comically in befuddlement as he registered who--and what--was waiting for him. “You are not Hive.” The staccato clicks of Insecticon cant were compressed, but simple enough to interpret--at least for a conversation like this. One forehand transformed into an armgun, the weapon whining as it powered up. The sentry pointed it at Ravage, warily scanning the small confines of the tank’s interior once more. But there was only a great block of slowly-leaking energon… and this speaking technimal.

“No,” Ravage agreed. “I am not Hive. Nor am I enemy^Hive. But I sent the treasure^energon^call.”

The scout’s field rippled, disconcerted, and fanged mandibles pinched together. “How does a Hiveless know scoutsong?”

“It was taught to me, many, many clutch^cycles ago,” Ravage said. “We do not have much time. Other Hiveless pursue this craft.”

“A trap!” The scout took a step backwards, chittering angrily. There were hisses from the roof, and another sextet of angry red optics peered down into the vehicle, followed by the muzzle of a primitive shrapnel-thrower.

“A trap,” Ravage agreed, keeping his hackles low. “For them. Energon^bounty, good frame^metal, and treasures for your Hive. This crawl^craft is yours. But that is only the smallest part of the treasure. Your warriors follow?”

There was a rapid-fire exchange of interrogative chitters between the Insecticons. Sensory antenna twitched as the scout inside the vehicle scented the air. “... yes?” he said, as if unsure which answer was the correct one.

“Good.” The answer made the Insecticons twitch again. Insecticon warriors might not be as disciplined as elite warframes, but they were formidable, and tended to show no mercy to anything that was not part of their Hive. “The chasing^warrior Hiveless will claim this trove for their own,” Ravage continued. “But if you hide within, they will believe they have caught their prey. Then your warriors can catch *them*. From their scavenged^corpse^caches, many treasures for the Hive.”

The scout clicked consideringly. “Dangerous. Warrior^Hiveless strong.”

“Yes,” Ravage agreed. “Stronger than your warriors?”

The question made the scout stiffen, backplates and wings rattling in indignation. “Warriors strong, defend Hive. Kill all interloper^Hiveless,” it snapped, insulted.

Ravage inclined his head. “Just so.” He rose to his pedes, triggering the switch to the cabin door. As it hissed open, he flicked his tail, indicating the vehicle. “I leave the crawler to you, then. The decision whether to claim it for your Hive^brethren is now yours. The warrior^Hiveless will be in sight within a klik.”

Clicking, obviously off-balance, the Insecticon took a step forward. “Hiveless will wait--” But Ravage was not inclined to allow the Insecticons time to decide whether to claim *him* as well. He marked the rapidly passing roadway, the tumbled broken lands beyond it, gauging their speed. Then he leaped.

A rattle of high-pitched clicks chirped from the vehicle, Insecticons twisting around in surprise or anger, but Ravage was already gone. His dark frame vanished into the unending night without so much as a puff of metaldust or swaying of rust-stalks to hint at where he’d passed, becoming nothing but one more shade in the shadowed land, a swift ghost among the wreckage of ages.

The Insecticons hesitated atop their swaying prize, but the contents of the tank and the alloys of its frame proved too tempting to ignore. Clicking and chittering, they seemed to make their decision as more of the heavy warriors landed. The biggest mecha swarmed inside while several mottled scouts took wing, the swiftest flyers buzzing away. The last of the Insecticons reached out with claws almost as long as Ravage’s entire frame, and hooked the ramp closed.

Ravage stretched his tensors in a flat-out run. Tubular stalks of rust flashed past to either side, brittle remnants of the thin photovoltaic spears that once had crowded these broken plains. The structures crumbled into powder if brushed, which would give away his presence -- and so he bounded between, there and then gone, the flail-tipped weight of his tail lashing for balance. He left nothing but pedeprints, and few enough of those.

The tank was slowing, overtaken by the billowing cloud of metal dust it raised. Another cloud of dust approached as well, and specks on the horizon would probably be Enforcer helos, coming in fast. The big bladeframe lengthened his strides. Drawing ahead, Ravage circled wide, each springmetal leap carrying him ten mechanometers or more, up tumbled piles of rust and iron where the plains broke into weathered ridges and ravines. The rusted stalks thinned out around him and then -- there, a sheltered vantage. In the lee of a twisted wreck that might once have been a photovoltaic cling-mechanism, Ravage padded to a halt, a silent sentry in the darkness.

The road lay in serpentine undulations below, glowing faintly in places where the embedded lighting had yet to fail, or where puddles of acid rain had collected. The glow of distant Nyon cast strange shadows across the fractured landscape. The tank still rolled forward in a desultory way, massive engines hiccuping on energon fumes, big pistons missing beats as control systems tried to access the components that had been stripped away. The huge mechanism’s forward lights flickered fitfully.

Furious comms thickened the air as the Enforcers gained ground. Someone activated a loudspeaker. “This is Enforcement! Stop the vehicle and come out with weapons systems disengaged. You are surrounded; if you do not stop, we will open fire!”

There was no reply. The Enforcer tried his speech again, to no visible effect. “Fragitall. Surrender, functionless scum!”

By now the tank had slowed to a jogging mech’s pace. Ravage counted twelve grounders in mottled black and white, all of them dusty from the long, high-speed chase. If Ravage was any judge, they’d be discussing whether to wait a few klicks for aerial backup. The big cat tensed… but no. Tired and low on energon, impatience had gotten the better of the pursuit force. The first Enforcer launched himself into his biped alt. Gripping the edge of the tank, he swung himself to the top. Another quickly joined him, while the rest of the Enforcers fell into a tight perimeter around the slow-moving tank. Setting grappling claws into the rim of the top hatch -- left temptingly loose -- they heaved with all their might, tensors trembling with the strain.

With a groan audible even over the tank’s rumble, the hatch came open. One of the mecha leaned warily over the gap, scanning the dimly-lit interior, faceplates tightening in confusion. One raised an armgun, as if to point it inside--

The rear hatch opened, crashing down onto one of the pursuing mecha, across his roof and clearplate. The dead weight pinned him, wheel shocks cracking and tires skudding along the roadway. In desperation the mech tried to transform, to get out from under the crushing mass, as the biggest Insecticon warframes swarmed down the gangplank. Caught between alts, the cursing mech was crushed once more under the combined mass, between the ramp and the ground. The tank dragged him, howling, along the road. Bits of plating and wire fragments tore loose to ping down the rough metal surface and off the other Enforcers’ hoods.

The other black-and-whites, though, had more things to worry about than the fate of one half-crushed mech. The lead Insecticon -- a brute of a beast every bit as large as a tankframe -- was on the foremost Enforcer in one great wing-assisted leap. Chittering, the fighter punched a bladed fist savagely down, through clearplate and into the mech’s cargo hold… and his internals.

The organized circle of Enforcers scattered, veering in all directions. Two collided in a mess of screeching wheels and clashing metal as both tried to transform. Another floundered off the road entirely, crashing headlong into a ditch still steaming with the caustic rain of the last orn.

Insecticons poured out of the tank, a stream of chitinous wing covers and armored backs, of flashing legs and long-bladed mandibles. The flickering light from half-broken fixtures inside the tank and the Hive-force’s mottled colors made it difficult to tell one from the other. Instead they became a savage mass of razored mandibles and wings, of speed and viciously barbed talons. Screams mingled with desperate shouts of defiance as Enforcers fought and fell, the cacophony of battle overlaid by the buzzing of wings.

“Whut the fra--” the two Enforcers atop the tank turned, momentarily taken aback as chaos unfolded below them. Behind them, unnoticed, talons caught at the lip of the tank’s top hatch. The smaller Insecticon who had confronted Ravage twisted his way out of the narrow opening. The mech moved almost silently, the small sounds of clicking claws obscured by the crashes and screams below. Without warning, the scout struck, viciously launching himself forward, armblades snapping outward for a single, precision thrust through the join between backplates, biting deep into a primary fuel reservoir.

The Enforcer screamed, staggering. Energon fountained from the wound, sheeting down his frame. A second scout was through the hatch before the second Enforcer could begin to turn; he launched himself forward in a wing-assisted leap, slamming bodily into the other mech. Ignoring the other struggle, the first Insecticon had brutally cut the pedes from beneath his prey, disabling any attempt to escape. The Enforcer flailed, trying to bring weapons to bear, only to have an armgun crushed beneath a taloned pede. Clicking in satisfaction, the Insecticon unlimbered a siphon with a secondary hand, slamming it into the wound.

This, more than anything else, was why Insecticons were so feared. Normal mecha could offline each other, would use parts scavenged from lifeless frames, upon occasion. They might even drain a dead mech’s tanks, if necessary, if there was no other choice.

Insecticons, on the other hand, didn’t care where their energon came from. Alive or dead, mech or drone: it was all the same to a swarm. Insecticons would strip their prey of everything useful;  plating torn off from screaming mecha, weapons ripped from frames, internals sliced apart with surgical precision to obtain precious metals, valuable mechanisms. Optics and sensory mods would be stripped, tanks pierced so that a living mech’s energon could be brutally siphoned away. Nothing was wasted. Mecha sometimes survived Insecticon attacks if reached soon enough, their sparks clinging stubbornly to life within torn-apart frames. But in Cybertron’s trackless wilds, they were the exception, not the rule.

Enforcers fought and fell beneath the onslaught, even as more scouts poured from the belly of the tank to join the fray. The fight was frantic and brutal as hunters became the hunted, victims of an ambush they had been given no reason to expect. Frantic comm-calls were sent to Nyon, to the approaching heliformers, reports flashing outward into the Enforcer tacnet, calling for reinforcements, even as mecha began dropping offline.

But the Insecticons were canny; their Hive knew Nyon and its Enforcers well. Even as the approaching heliformers got close enough to begin to make out the ongoing carnage, spiralling missiles launched up into the frozen sky behind them, trailing twists of smoke. The Insecticons might not have access to all the long-range weaponry of military warframes, but their scouts nevertheless excelled in ambush. In this broken, shadowed terrain, they could slip unseen from one outcropping to the next to launch their attacks, almost impossible pin down. The missiles themselves were primitive things, off-course and far too slow to present a threat to a modern helo. Or so most mecha assumed. The missiles screamed upwards, missing their target by dozens of mechanometers--then detonated *above* their intended targets, disintegrating into clouds of white-hot incendiary shrapnel. The explosions rained down flack, shredding rotors and piercing the thinner portions of their armor, forcing the heliformers to take evasive action to protect their backs.

Still, the rest of the Insecticons knew there was no time to linger over their prey. As Enforcers began to fall under the warriors’ onslaught, the scouts ravaged their frames, stripping armor, tearing off weapons. Once fully loaded, one by one they took off into the darkness, wings buzzing, bringing their bounty back to a well-hidden Hive.

In less than a klick, the pursuit force was decimated. Two of the mecha who had spun out early in the fight managed to free themselves -- then took one look at the carnage and fled. The bigger Insecticon warriors clacked their mandibles, eager to give chase… but conscious of their limited time window, turned back, helping scouts tear crippled mecha apart, turning plasma torches on the hollowed-out shell of the tank.

The chill air whispered across Ravage’s backplates. One audial twitched, but the symbiont did not turn his gaze from the unfolding wreckage below, even as a long, flexible frame crowded close beside his flank. Soundwave would want all the visuals he could get, after all.

 _//Wow,//_ said Buzzsaw, comms kept low, nanites darkened nearly to black. _//That’s… quite the sight.//_ He flinched subtly as two warriors grasped a still-screaming, crippled mech between them and heaved, nearly separating helm and the mech’s remaining arm, while a scout clawed at the opening where the mech had been cleaved in two at the waist, tearing out databanks, processors, intact fuel tanks, and tubing.

 _//Insecticons always demand their price,//_ Ravage agreed. The warriors flung the eviscerated torso away, in too much of a hurry to crack open the heavy armor to get at the spark chamber. Understandable -- modern technology like optics and sensors were always in shorter supply in Insecticon colonies than raw materials, even cybertronium. If rescue crews reached him within a few joors, the mech might survive, though the hardware and accumulated data that made him an Enforcer would be long gone. _//But worthwhile, in this instance. We have an unexpected prize, courtesy of a cohort of jumpframes.//_

 _//Jumpframes?//_ Buzzsaw cast him an incredulous look. _//You’re pulling my circuits, right?//_

Ravage refrained from rumbling his amusement. The dismantling of the tank was going swiftly, despite the mechanism’s desultory forward motion. The Insecticons had finished tearing out the expensive military command modules, and started on the high-tensile armored walls. By the time the other Enforcer units arrived, there would be nothing left, save perhaps for the parts too heavy and cheap to be worth taking -- nothing but a platform atop slow-moving treads, driven by momentum, aimless in the desert.

 _//Not a bit. There is a data-crystal beneath the clasps of my right breastplate. The jumpframes found it, and passed it on to me,//_ said Ravage. _//Take it--fly swift and safe. Our Master will want to see this.//_

 

*********

 

In the intelligence center, mecha watched the screens, some of them with buccal units agape. All the mecha there were battle-hardened warframes. Each had seen thousands of vorns of action. Still, their fields drew tighter with each carefully-archived crunch or snap.

Lord Megatron, on the other hand, watched Soundwave. That unrelenting attention felt like a tightening fist, and Soundwave could not guess at what it boded.

Schism seemed as stunned as the rest--but he recovered quickly. “Do you have any idea -- any idea at *all* -- what this will do to the forces in Nyon?” Mecha looked to him, and Schism straightened, raised his voice, pointing a talon dramatically at the screen to emphasize his point. “In a joor, every Enforcer in the city will be on high alert. We kept our strikes small and surgical, waiting until Senate mismanagement drove enough deep fractures to exploit. Now...”

Tiltwing’s optics widened. “Now the Senate will believe that we have recruited the local Insecticons. Troops in the city will multiply tenfold.”

There would be no more playing for time, now. The room erupted, voices tumbling over each other, indignation warring with speculation. Would the Senate launch crusades against the local Hives? Could the Decepticons take advantage of that? Would it even be possible for the resistance units to remain in the city, or would they have to be recalled, losing all the influence they had gained? Could they be placed under deep cover? Once the city went on military lockdown, would the Senate provide enough supplies to keep the city stable? A new city commander might even be appointed, perhaps one more competent. Or the cityformers themselves might be reconfigured, in which case….

Lord Megatron said nothing. Behind the Lord High Protector, the hatchway slid open. Soundwave was hard-pressed to keep his field from flickering in relief.

“What the Pit--”

 _//Scanned and ready for ya, boss!//_ Subtle as a shadow, trailing dust and ash from his long flight, Buzzsaw ghosted between tight groups of mecha, a flash of wings and long spined tail too fast to catch. Clasped in his beak… was a small, faceted data crystal, somewhat the worse for wear from its adventures.

“Senate: soon will have far greater concerns,” Soundwave intoned. The agile symbiont swooped to his carrier’s pauldron. Soundwave tore his gaze from Lord Megatron’s, casting an impartial look around the crowded chamber.

He was acutely, terrifyingly aware that he was risking everything with this gambit: but then, when over the past forty vorns had he risked anything less? Clinging desperately to his tricks of timing and theatricality -- gleaned both from Laserbeak and his time in the Arena -- Soundwave spoke into the momentary surprise.“Soundwave: requests permission to clear all lower-ranked mecha. This information, suitable only for legati and above.”

Unsurprisingly, the request sparked a storm of angry protest.

“What do you think you're--?”

“--a mere tribunus--!”

“Enough.” Dropkick didn’t shout. He didn’t have to. The gravelly bark of that single word, underscored by the low rev of his engines, was enough to silence the room. The spymaster turned to the Lord High Protector. “Lord Megatron?”

The moment seemed to stretch for eons before Megatron spoke. “You have presented a most unique defense thus far, Tribunus. And your acquisition of a cityformer’s firmware module … leaves me more curious still.” His talons curled in an imperious gesture. “Clear the room.”

This time, there was no protest, though the looks aimed at Soundwave made it clear that the big carrier had made quite a few new enemies. Still, the room was emptied of all support staff within a klik, leaving only legati, Soundwave … and the Lord High Protector.

“Preliminary analysis: indicates Formidex himself compiled encrypted communiques. Messages, primarily between Nyon code specialists and Senate committee.” Soundwave paused, letting that bit of data sink in. He didn’t need to spell it out: if a cityformer had chosen to deliberately pass information to Decepticon agents, then ...

The data crystal was too outdated to be read directly by anything in the room. Thankfully, the data within had already been reformatted by Buzzsaw into a data packet. It wasn’t a perfect translation; there was some degradation where the crystal had chipped, fragmenting the data. But there was more than enough there for Soundwave to upload to the console. One by one, the screens lit up, mapping telltale mineral and protometal requisitions, reassignments of entire groups of creator-mecha, the passage of convoys under massively heavy guard.

And then the first of the communications interlaced, came together on the holoscreens --

\-- and what appeared … was an abomination.

 

*********

 

 _//This entire project is risky, Senator.//_ Soundwave tagged each speaker even as the glyphs scrolled, heavy with tones of worry/shame/uncertainty. The first: a code specialist, designation Riprap. His area of expertise: cityformer maintenance and core coding, spark-level code stability and adaptations. _//To try something like this with any mech is unprecedented. Much less with--//_

 _//Hardly unprecedented.//_ These glyphs were far more assured, confidence resonating from every modification. Devcon: one of the highest-ranking governing mecha in the Senate. _//Are not gestalts created in just this way? Several sparks, linked together, intended to merge into a sum greater than their parts? This is merely an extension of that theory.//_ The project data, scrolling alongside the glyph feeds, was damning. This project was not merely a thought experiment, but actively in development. Tagged resources, lists of creator-mecha, medics, code specialists all drawn in for consultations: it was all there. _//It is the next, necessary step.//_

 _//Perhaps, but--gestalts are never meant to *stay* combined long-term, Senator. We don’t even know what kind of code corruption might result if we did. And to do this with dyad-sparks … we might very well be risking the stability of all Cybertron with this. It’s ...//_ Riprap hesitated, obviously unwilling to openly criticize his superior.

“Blasphemy!” Tiltwing hissed, optics spiralled down into furious pinpoints.

_//Optimus Prime has already authorized the creation of a new dyad, and Sentinel himself will oversee the Zeta project,// Devcon said, unruffled. //Your concerns are admirable, but misplaced. The utmost precautions have been taken.//_

Soundwave switched to another encrypted conversation--this one was a great deal more heated.

 _//You--you wish to--no! I would never do that to a spark, must less a dyad! I don’t care what kind of ‘honor’ it is!//_ Sky High: a creator-mech, one of the most famous in Nyon. _//Forcing two unmerged sparks into a single frame, much less those of a Prime and Protector? Are you mad? No creator would ever stunt their creations in such a manner!//_

 _//Creator, peace--we did not wish to cause you distress. We do not wish to harm any spark, much less any of your creations.//_ This time the speaker was a lesser mech, a silver-voiced functionary aide. _//This is merely a new evolution, a new unfolding of potential. Surely you see how Cybertron has suffered because of the failed union between Prime and Protector.//_

_//But--//_

_//Both the Senate and Optimus himself are agreed; we must create a new dyad. We must find a way to avoid repeating our mistakes. If we can enframe Prime and Protector in a single mech, create an indivisible union between two sparks, then we can prevent such a schism from ever happening again. We can finally have a Prime that will truly lead us out of darkness.//_

Another flicker of screens, and a new discussion took the place of the old.

 _//I am still not sure that the rewards of project Zeta are commensurate with the risks,//_ said the Nyon city commander, his faceplates folded down into a concerned frown. _//There is a great deal about the core coding of Primes and Protectors that even code specialists do not understand. Meddling in that, well. The outcome may not be predictable. Or... controllable.//_

Senator Devcon’s reply was well-practiced and smooth. _//Too long has Cybertron suffered under the whims of Primes and Protectors. The rest of the mecha of this planet have moved on, have adapted to the circumstances of a changing world; now we must do the same. Isn’t it better for Cybertron to be governed by consensus, rather than some archaic Prime’s edict? It is past time we let the Senate truly represent the mecha of this world. Zeta Prime will be our emblem: the golden figurehead that sweeps away the mistakes of the past.//_

The Senator leaned forward. _//See that the shipments proceed as directed, Commander. And leave the questions of control… to us.//_

 

*********

 

“--Impossible -- My Lord, we -- where were my spies -- how could something like this --“ voices fell over one another, a stream of glyphs, protests, words upon words upon words...

The cold devoured them all.

Soundwave reset his haptics, reset them again as the sensation only magnified, spread. It felt like chains of hoarfrost, barbed as razorvine, should be spreading across his plating. And yet…

Screen after screen lit up with those carefully compiled and thoroughly damning comms, collected over vorns of patient, ever-present listening. _//This is the eleventh time we’ve had to recalibrate the sparkware sequences --// //They *will* stabilize, Sky High!//_ The light of the holoscreens cast horrified Legati now in shadow, now in pale illumination.

The chill was relentless, washing out even the whipcrack rage in the fields of all the Legati around him. It felt external to him, somehow, almost as if Soundwave had failed to clamp down thoroughly enough on the telepathic module. But the blocks were good, were holding, were… insufficient, Soundwave realized faintly. For although the Lord High Protector’s talons tightened, his field was tightly, powerfully controlled. Yet *something* bled over, bled through, the merest taste of seething hoarfrost code.

Soundwave had once stood atop the seawalls of Polyhex, on the Bitter Way, where the vast and smoking molecular flux of the Rust Sea had once swallowed entire cities in the wake of the great quakes. He’d wondered, then, what those ancient grounders must have felt, bearing witness as the sea receded, gathering itself for a cataclysm that would consume all it touched. Now, he knew.

It was well that Soundwave had already blocked off the module so thoroughly. He suspected he might go blind, or mad, if he had not.

And as the last of the screens fell silent, heretical glyphs still glowing, Megatron spoke. “Find them for me.” Soundwave looked up from those fisted talons, met optics as crimson as a conflagration, realized only then that the order was meant for him. “Every mech who cooperated; the abomination itself. You will have what you need. Find them all.”

In the face of such glacial fury, there was only one possible reply.

_“Soundwave: acknowledges.”_


End file.
